i wish that was me :(

it's weird how i didn't know i was trans growing up but looking back i was absolutely trans, if that makes sense.. like just because i didn't really know that you could be trans (which is another reason why media needs visible positive representations of trans people)

Damn.

In my neck of the woods, people of her generation just didn't have options. You either left home like she did, or you struggled to survive. I think the first trans woman I met was probably that age; we never got close since I was a damn kid, but she was closer to my mom's age for sure. She had been all over the world trying to find a place to call home, and had some real horrifying stories. And scars, literally and figuratively.

I got the impression that sex work was extremely common in the cities that you could get access to treatments and surgeries. Hard to work a regular job with no ID because you ran away in fear with no documentation at all.

But later on, the trans people I met of that age range all had similar stories, if they didn't have the "luck" of already being close to somewhere that had access to a community and help, or the much rarer fortune of supportive family.

It's infuriating that anyone should have to go through that kind of thing just to be.

I know, even back then it wasn't always the case that people had to make those choices, but it really seems to be a common thread that homelessness, addiction, and sex work were a shared experience for way more people than is even fair.

in awe at the bravery. there's someone to look up to 😍

that must've been rough

I haven't watched it yet, but apparently the last days of the sex worker scene Mardi ran away from home to join are featured in the documentary Hookers on Davie which was filmed just before the respectable queers forcibly displaced them from the neighborhood.

Also this must be her podcast, A Life Lived Trans.

Edit: better quality version is available here.