Call it being a Libra, call it the aftermath of religious trauma, call it growing up in high control religion, blame it on any one of those things (or any combination), but I have spent most of my life being a people pleaser. Doing whatever it takes to keep the peace, to not get anyone upset with me, often times at great cost to my own mental and even physical health. It has manifested in not telling people what I really believe, shoving down what I actually want, going along with what others want, but most vitally it has shown up in not speaking my own truth. 

There is something that happens in my body when people are upset with me. It’s a full body flush. It’s like the ends of my nerves are on fire. I am amped up, feeling activated, and often willing to do whatever I can do to make the feeling go away which generally looks like trying to appease the other person as quickly as possible. 

Over the last several years I’ve done a lot of work on this in myself. I’ve learned how to regulate better. I’ve established healthier boundaries. I’ve gotten clearer on my values. That has helped to reduce the number of times I go into the full body flush, but it still happens. 

And one of the places where I still feel confined is in my writing. Which, in a lot of ways, feels counterintuitive. Writing is where I go to sort things out, to speak the truth, to go deeper than I can in other places. And yet, because of how important writing is to me, and how often writing can be misunderstood (purposefully or not) I sometimes find myself holding back. Or overexplaining. Or trying to answer every question I believe might come up in the reader’s mind before they can even ask it. I equivocate because I know people have short attention spans and are often looking for a “gotcha” moment. I’ve seen how social media can bring out the worst in people and lead to the most bad faith arguments and moments, and I’ve seen how that is starting to bleed out of social media and into other places. So I get nervous. 

I also realize how much pressure there still is on trans stories (and the people who tell them). How little representation exists. I am aware of the stereotypes that are floating around about us. I’m aware of the fear based lies that are being propagated. I am aware of how fragile the mental health is of so many trans people, not because being trans has anything to do with mental illness, but because this world seems determined to make trans people feel sick and wrong and that can’t help but take a toll. 

I sometimes get feedback on my plays about my characters being “too perfect”. They’re not messy enough. And it’s because I feel like I can’t write a messy trans person because we don’t have enough representation. Because anything I write fictionally might be used against my community, because I don’t think we’ve had enough “non messy” trans people to look up to to be ready for messy. 

But I also know holding myself back from telling the truest stories I can isn’t good for me or for my art. 

My play Laughing, Flexing, Dying that I worked on at Flint Rep was a bit of an experiment for me. I was tired of writing plays with trans characters and then having audiences only want to talk about the non-trans characters. So I decided to write a play with only trans characters. Three trans men, older than what we normally see in plays, not struggling with their identities as much as struggling with how to exist in the world. In the play the three go to a cabin for their annual guys weekend, but they are grappling with the loss of one of their friends who isn’t there this year. 

As I wrote this play I continually pushed myself to say more than I usually would. To complicate the narrative. To push for nuance. To push an audience to consider trans men that they might not have seen on stage (or anywhere else) before. To forget about the cis audience sometimes and speak to my trans brothers and not worry about anyone listening in. 

There is a moment in the play where one of the characters finally says everything he’s been holding back and I pushed myself to say so many of the things I had been holding back. It felt incredibly vulnerable to have other people read and hear those words.

And yet, when the reading happened, it was that monologue that people talked about. That was the moment that resonated. That was the thing that stuck with people.

The things I had been afraid to say out loud. The truth I pushed myself to express. That was what broke through.

It was a reminder to me that sometimes the hard thing is the thing worth saying. Sometimes it’s okay to be messy or not as nice. Sometimes it’s important to be vulnerable and in your vulnerability you might reach someone else. 

It’s also an invitation to examine other areas in my life where I have been holding back and how that might be doing more harm than good. Where am I afraid to do the thing I know is right (or at least right for me) because I’m worried it won’t be the popular thing? What am I afraid to say because I am worried about how it will be received?

Sometimes this urge to be the “good one”, to be the one above reproach, to be the one liked, means I hold up systems and people I don’t believe in because I am afraid of making waves. I am afraid of losing friends or family. I am afraid of rocking the boat. But in this time I know I need to be less afraid of messing up systems (even familial and relational systems) and more afraid of the cost of letting things ride: the cost to my own soul, but also the cost to marginalized communities around me. 

Being liked by oppressors doesn’t keep us safe, not in the long run. So here’s to learning to say the hard thing. Here’s to ruffling feathers that need to be ruffled. Here’s to speaking the truth, even if I do it with a shaky voice and a full body flush. Here’s to trusting that even if I am not liked, I will at least be fully alive. 

I feel like so many of us from marginalized communities are holding back, prioritizing other’s comfort at the expense of our own. What would happen if we opened up? If we said all of the things we’ve been refusing to say? If we let them know how scared and angry and hurt and offended and alarmed and alone and and and and we are? 

Maybe we could finally crack into a new way of being. For all of us.