I spent so much of my life trying to shout my truth loud enough that no one could take it from me. I thought if I didn’t fight for every inch of who I am, the world would snatch it back while I slept. Maybe I wasn’t wrong. Maybe that fight was needed for me. But him? He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t bargain with the world for permission.

He just is.

He knows who he is in a way I never did. And in that calm, he’s teaching me a freedom I never thought possible: the freedom of not needing society’s permission.

Still, I am terrified. I watch laws get drafted by people who’ve never met him, never sat across from him at breakfast while he laughs about Pokémon or asks for more syrup. I watch grown adults spin cruel stories about kids like mine, and I want to roar, raise my fists, stand between him and a world that wants him small, hidden, undone.

He just shrugs. They can’t make me not me, he says.

He’s right. Laws can make his life harder, crueller, less safe, but they can’t strip him of who he is.