Love.

When I was younger I dreamed of being in love. Not necessarily the kind of love you find in the movies, with big romantic gestures and anguished declarations of feeling, but a more subdued, softer kind. I dreamed of meeting at coffee shops and having a warm peppermint mocha together, peppered with discussions on Keats and Shelley. I dreamed of driving through endless hazy forests blasting our favorite albums from dusk until sunrise. I dreamed of acoustic guitars and wide open spaces. But most of all, I dreamed of their warm skin, the pools of eternity in their eyes, and the flowing rivers of hair brushed up against my face when we kissed.

It was something a little softer. Maybe a bit more pure.

And the years piled on and there were so many chances. So many times I could have made it perfect. People I thought I would spend eternity with. Memories I thought would never fade. Moments that made me forget about all the shitty things that may have happened to me that week and allowed me to Just. Be. Free.

And of course, there is the obvious. Expectations =/= reality. The people we love are never as perfect as we make them out to be. Soon the halo fades and we are left with the cruel and terrible fact that we are only human and love is never like the movies. But for me there is an added layer… the fear that grips me, the doubt that pushes me towards the ground when all I want to do is stand up and walk. Those awful questions like, “Why can’t I tell them who I really am? What if they find out and freak, or I tell them and they take it the wrong way? What if they wouldn’t love me if I told them I was trans?”

I didn’t have an answer to this then, before I came out. And I don’t know. Even when they all know my true name, when they see me walk in my long flowing dress and makeup. I still have to take a long, deep breath before I walk in the door. I have to hold my thoughts still, keep the incredibly valid fears I have manifest themselves as crippling insecurity. I have to remember that even though my ex-girlfriend said she would leave me if I started wearing women’s clothes, that doesn’t mean every other person I talk to will.

It’s easy to pretend that this doesn’t matter. That you don’t internalize all those media messages and compare yourself to girls on Instagram. That you don’t need to be pretty, you’re not that shallow, anyone is deserving of love. But I don’t know… trans women aren’t told they’re beautiful all that often.

I’m taking steps to conquer this fear. To be more honest when I love, to love more fully, to love myself. It’s a struggle. All those harrowing realities of dating, all the times the conversations go dry and you don’t know what to say to fill them again, are coupled with the brutal truth that dating as a trans woman is a lot harder. But it’s something I need to power through if I ever want to feel that pure, unfiltered love. The kind you don’t share with anyone else but that one, special someone. The kind with those coffee shops and long drives through the woods in the middle of the night.