Esther Falick

I could not imagine what I looked like.

I couldn't really, like, see possibilities.

But then, if I imagined myself...

as a woman, suddenly, not only could I project into the future and have these images, but they felt good.

They felt liberating.

They felt right.

I was just breathing.

I had all these signs.

I was listening to my body and I was like, I don't think that it would be the case that you can only see yourself in the future happy as a woman

if you weren't a woman.

I started slowly coming out to people.

First to my friends, and I did the whole pipeline.

I was like, he, him, he, they, they, them, she, they, she, her.

So first I was just like, hey everyone, I'm he, they, and they were like, great.

Well my friends were like, great, and my siblings were like, great, but my parents were like, what?

What does this mean?

And it was so funny because back then I was like, all it means is that if sometimes people use they, I won't be upset.

But they still were like, no, no, no, this is crazy, this is crazy.

What was interesting was that as soon as I brought up that I was questioning my gender, I started to notice the way that it would make other people in my life think about their gender.

With my family, when I told them that I was non-binary at the time, suddenly like my mom was doing a girl's dinner and my dad was doing a guy's dinner in a way that like they hadn't really done.