The last time I stood at the border of Kansas, shaking the dust off my feet, wind to my back, was twenty-six years ago.
At that time, I had my name, biological gender, and everything else changed permanently and physically so I could stay alive. This was not without consequence; the state told me if I didn't leave, my children would never leave foster care. They ripped my kids from my arms—their mother’s arms—simply because of who I was. “Family values™.”
It was a years-long battle, but I finally got one of my children back. They came to live with me in the sanctuary I'd run to.
Still it was over three years before I finally got my youngest back; however, because of the system, to do so we'd have to live in Kansas again. My mother, who owned a farm here, found a place for us right down the country road from her. It had 20 acres and housed the chance to be a family again. Hopefully we could finally put this heart-breaking nightmare behind us.
Mom’s health was beginning to fail, so it felt right to be near again. She taught me everything I know about how to survive in this world; how to find goodness in it when that seemed impossible. So, we all crossed the unthinkable marker, a reunited and redefined family, which now included my oldest daughter's girlfriend. We needed each other.
Before we moved to this farm, I'd not lived at the same address for more than two years in my entire lives (either of them). That was 14 years ago. At 62, I finally had a home. My children were now adults, and it felt like we may finally be safe from the ruthless machine that once tried—and succeed for a time—to tear us apart.
Our family made Kansas our home. My oldest married her girlfriend eleven years ago, to our great joy. We all began to create art again, in our own ways. And having my family near Mom before she became an ancestor was a priceless part of being a Kansan.
Before she passed, my mom told me the story of my birth. She told me how my sex was uncertain. She told me how the doctor pulled my father aside, and the two men decided I would live my life as a man. That decision, made for me when I was a few hours old, dictated the direction of my entire life. I had to search and find and become myself; I had to reinvent to find who I truly was from the start.
And then last week the Kansas Legislature erased it all.
I don’t think people grasp what SB 244 means for trans people like me. My Real ID suddenly means nothing. Neither does my US Passport. I have now medically transitioned; I have breasts and a vagina. But to comply with this bill my ID must say I’m male. That was the gender assigned to me by a doctor in Texas many decades ago, but it is not accurate to who I am today (or was then, for that matter). I don’t think lawmakers understand my reality, and I feel confident they don’t care.
Under this law, every moment of existence is a legal conundrum for people like me. One wrong step—and it seems any step could be construed as “wrong”—could bring devastating consequences.
Like many, we’re now forced to leave Kansas—the place we call home—for my safety and the safety of my family. And even in the short-term I have no idea how to navigate the legal Bermuda Triangle created by this law. With my legal ID in limbo, can I sign a contract? Will this transaction be honored or invalidated? Could I lose my down payment, my earnest money, my deposits? Could I lose everything?
Even if the transaction succeeds, when I’m driving away from Kansas for the last time can I stop to use the restroom along the way? I’m now “biologically” female, yet the law requires I use the restroom of the sex assigned at birth. If I as a visibly obvious female use the men’s restroom, though, will I be harassed, attacked, or arrested? If I use the women’s restroom instead, as I am accustomed, and someone found out would I be harassed, attacked, or arrested?
At the moment, I have no right answer. No matter what I do, in the aftermath people can say I earned such a fate, that I should have instead chosen the alternative.
You shouldn't wonder if I'm scared. I’m terrified; we all are.
So here I stand, knocking the dirt from my boots one last time, having fled the home I loved, dust in the wind at my back, as I leave Kansas forever. Once again—and for the last time—the state’s evisceration of my right to simply exist succeeded in forcing my hand. And the ones who did so call it “freedom.”