Transgender Idaho woman: No trans kid deserves to experience what I lived through | Opinion

Take it from me, a 57-year-old transgender woman living in the Treasure Valley. Banning gender-affirming health care for trans youth will result in a drastic decline in their mental health and higher rates of death.

I experienced the former and was dangerously close to the latter.

I’ve called Idaho home since I was 10 years old. Just a few decades ago, “transgender” wasn’t a term anyone knew, so I didn’t have language to express what I knew about myself. But by age 6, like most trans people, I knew there was something different about me.

I loved the song “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy, so I gathered up all my little kid bravery and sang that song to my mom, unsure of what this might look like to her, but certain it felt right to me. She shut me down immediately. She made it clear I had to stuff those feelings about myself down, putting me in sports I didn’t want to play and ensuring that I passed as a boy even though every fiber of my soul knew I was a girl.

Things were hard for my family. My father was disabled and had gone blind because of a welding accident when I was 3 years old, so my mom was taking care of the family largely alone. My older sister did her best to try and protect me, help me and affirm me, but I didn’t fit in anywhere. Back then, I thought I was the only one in the world who felt the way I felt because being transgender wasn’t discussed back then. Thanks to a few gains in civil rights, kids these days have someone to talk to when the body they were born into doesn’t match their true identity. Kids now are more free to be who they are, and it’s more acceptable to talk about it. But it seems the Idaho Legislature wants to take that away, too.

I was so utterly alone growing up. This created a deep depression in me, and without access to gender-affirming health care or mental health services, I sank lower and began relying on recreational drug use to numb my pain. Because of this, I spent some time in prison, which did not help me or my gender situation. I had dropped out of high school, and my future looked bleak.

I took to heart the hatred and fear I felt from others and internalized the message that I was morally wrong and damaged inside. I began contemplating ending my life. I simply could not “trick” my mind into existing in a different way, as much as everyone around me seemed to want it. I just couldn’t live with the charade of pretending to be a man anymore.

Statistics show I am far from being alone in being transgender, nor was mine an isolated case in terms of the pain I felt with never having my humanity acknowledged or accepted by my family or community.

The Center for American Progress, a nationwide nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing light to social issue and solutions, issued a report that demonstrates how and why gay and transgender people experience higher rates of substance abuse and found that it is directly tied to high levels of stress because of social prejudice and discriminatory laws, a lack of cultural competency by providers when accessing treatment for addiction and targeted marketing efforts by alcohol and tobacco companies that advertise bars and clubs as safe places for recreation when they are not always safe for transgender and gay people.

On top of that, transgender people experience homelessness, violence, sexual abuse, discrimination in employment, discrimination in health care and discrimination in relationship recognition at staggeringly higher rates than the population at large. It is all connected. I personally have experienced all of those things, and it is not a coincidence that I am also transgender.

Thankfully, I am still here and I have found my happiness. Well into adulthood, I realized that I needed to either live my authentic life or risk living none at all. Just 10 months ago, I put on my first patch for my feminizing hormone therapy. I cannot explain how happy it made me; in many ways, it felt like the first time I was truly happy in my own skin. I have a life partner whose two lovely children I adopted, and the love and happiness I experience are never lost on me.

This is literally a life-or-death decision where only transgender youth lives are on the line. Passing House Bill 71 would mean sending us a clear message that we don’t matter and our torment is what we deserve for existing as a trans person. I am terrified of losing access to my patches. I don’t want to go back to what my life was like before, and I don’t want that for trans kids now. Kids need their health care. If they don’t get access to health care, they’ll die. That is not melodrama; it is reality. Stop trying to take rights away from transgender Idahoans. Leave us in peace.

Dara Purkey lives in the Treasure Valley with her spouse and two children.