Ah, no wonder this essay seems to be extremely divorced from my lived experience: you’re only writing with only cisgender, heterosexual people in mind. Most of the people who have seriously let me down are friends and family who have rejected me for coming out as trans (and a handful who rejected me for coming out as queer earlier in my life).

It’s a lot harder to get over the hurt and betrayal that comes with being rejected by people who claim they love you, simply for telling them, ‘Hey, I’ve been living a lie, this is who I really am. Your support would mean so much to me.” When you’ve been assured you are loved unconditionally, and you find out for certain that that is not true, purely because you told your loved ones who you really are…it shakes your faith in everyone you love. And in my experience, the longer I’m out, the more cishet friends drop me and pull away from me. It’s hard to have faith in anyone after a while.