Dear Anita

Stockton University’s Wellness center has many resources for LGBTQ people. They have an LGBTQ safe space where people can hang out and meet other people. The campus is very uplifting with the trees, lake and the birds as well as the Wellness programs that they have. The counselors are more knowledgeable about LGBTQ people and have lots of insight about where to find resources on campus or other support groups nearby. Since Stockton is an university, they have more resources than the Ocean County Community college that I transferred from to Stockton. I enjoy being on the campus and they have meditation and holistic health classes as well as clubs that I am getting involved in. I do wish Stockton University’s library had books for reading rather than having all research books, but I like the quiet peace of the library and sitting in the small cubbies desks to study looking out at the trees is very relaxing. The library upstairs has Saturn planet hanging from the ceiling and it’s really cool. The professors have a good sense of humor and help their students feel less anxious, they have students work on ways to reduce their stress by having meditation sessions for students as well as nutrition counseling for students. I really like the wellness and mental health resources at Stockton, they have more diverse resources because they are a university and I like the quiet peaceful atmosphere with the nature. Although I miss the library at my former Ocean County community College because I enjoyed the books there for reading and it was always updating with new books, I like Stockton’s library as well. The librarians at Stockton are very helpful in helping students look for books for their research subjects or just to read to improve their knowledge in a field. The labs at Stockton are quite large and a bit intimidating for me because each student gets their own locker and drawer for their materials so that they can conduct their experiments. While I find it exciting to do research on my own and build my skills, I miss having a smaller lab and working with a partner like I used to at Ocean County Community college because I could check my work, but at Stockton each student does their own experiments. There are times when the gender dysphoria makes me quite anxious that I start to feel disconnected from myself and I feel like I’m losing touch with myself and it makes me doubt whether I can make it through in life. During those times, the inner critic of my gender dysphoria roars and it feels like the doubts and anxieties are ripping holes in myself and I am only paper that is being torn to shreds by dysphoria and there is only pain that makes it hard to focus and I just want it to end (sometimes it’s so bad that I wish I would fall asleep and not wake up). The good thing is that I decided to seek out the counselors at Stockton University and talk with them and they have been helpful with helping me express my feelings. In addition, they have a “Reinvent your life” group that focuses on helping people reduce their anxieties a bit so it doesn’t make them lose touch with the daily living and they have cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation and yoga which I find helpful. I find that journaling on tinybuddha is helpful as well and I find that reading over the past entries that I have written I have realized how far I’ve progressed and sometimes reading the stories of what I wrote makes me gain a sense of self when I feel lost. I am grateful to have the tinybuddha forum and thank you so much Anita for all your help. You are a light that helps brighten the world.

My gender dysphoria seems to have been getting more prominent because the more I know about it, the more I seem aware of it and the more I think about transitioning the more I want it to happen. I have never felt like I fit into the gender binary and I don’t like to be restricted in gender expression, I have always liked to play with the guys and been closer to the guys in my life. I remember when I was called a guy once I laughed and didn’t mind, that was when I realized that being a guy felt right for me. In middle school was when my body was changing due to puberty and I never liked the girls talking about their chests growing, I liked playing lacrosse with the boys and I always never cared about having a chest like the other girls wanted because what they thought would make them attractive I didn’t like. When I played soccer in middle school with the boys, I liked playing competitively and didn’t mind running into the guys at times, I found it lots of fun. I have never wanted to have a chest and I used to wear sports bras a lot because they constrict the chest and when I got my first chest binder in college I felt quite happy because the tight binder made my chest flat. I know in sophomore year of high school I joined the gymnastics team and I enjoyed gymnastics to help me build flexibility and balance, I didn’t mind wearing a leotard because gymnastics helped me burn lots of calories so I was quite skinny and wearing an undershirt helped me hide the curves of my body that I didn’t like. I quit the gymnastics team though because although I liked the gymnastics workouts, I talked with the coach if they accepted guys or gender neutral people on the team and the coach thought I was weird and said that they only accepted girls on the team and since I never fully felt female I quit the team. I admired the girls on the gymnastics team and I was good friends with them, but I never felt like I connected with them. In junior year of high school I joined the track team and I did shotput which helped me build my upper body and I enjoyed that more, but the girls on the track team made fun of me for not being feminine enough and since the guys ran faster than I did they didn’t really welcome me much so I decided to leave the track team. In senior year of high school, I had a guy friend that I enjoyed being around and he sat with me at lunch and helped me with my school work. I enjoyed being with him because he made me feel more comfortable about myself and since he was shy we didn’t talk much but he was a good mentor for me in school. I told him that I always thought being a guy was better and he listened and said he didn’t mind, he just told me to be myself and that’s why I enjoyed being around him. Even though he was shy, there were times when we would talk about something that would make both of us laugh. When I got to college and joined the LGBTQ community and they asked me about my pronouns I didn’t really know what to say, but told them to use he/him because I never liked female pronouns. the LGBTQ community at Ocean County college made me feel better about myself and I found that I enjoyed being a guy and when I cut my hair (even though my parents yelled at me) and got a chest binder it was like some part of me fit and I found a piece of myself. I have been living as a guy at Stockton and I find that it makes me feel happy, being with the guys is great and I feel like I belong like a part of me feels at home in myself with the guys.

My parents do favor my brother more but I don’t think that made much influence in my decision. Asian families tend to favor cisgender men (cisgender means they were born as a guy) because in their culture they think guys are strong and can do lots of chores. But I think that society has lots of stereotypes of guys being independent, financially stable, strong, not showing emotions and other constricting traits that lead to toxic masculinity and that is not something I like. Culture sometimes plays a role in people’s viewpoints but I believe that people can change their mindset by learning new things and it’s important to be open minded because there is a lot to learn in this world. My parents are very culturally conservative which is why they tend to adopt the values of their culture and they haven’t changed much. Although I wish they would change a bit and learn other things so that they don’t restrict themselves with the biases in their culture, they haven’t really been open to change and I have decided to work on myself rather than trying to teach them to be more open minded.