As a little girl, I never put any thought toward my gender, nor did I understand its complexities.

If my brother had his Game Boy out, I would play with it.

If my sisters wanted to play out dramatic stories with our dolls, I was a happy participant.

In my childish mind, I existed and that was enough for me.

However, one thing that was always on my mind was my weight.

I was a fat kid growing up.

One in five children in the U.S. has obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control. I was an example of this statistic.

My weight was a topic among the adults in my family. I would often hear, “You need to go on a diet,” as a little girl.

Because of this, it felt like all eyes were on me whenever I ate a plate of food.

It was unnerving, like I couldn’t enjoy food without someone commenting on how fat I was or would get if I ate so much.

My weight rooted itself as my one true insecurity and it stuck to me like tar.

When I was 9, school began to take a negative toll on me.

Classmates who I once viewed as friends were making fun of my weight. I felt isolated from my peers, and I no longer had any definitive friend group.

I was now just “the fat girl.”

From then on, my life at school would be very lonely. And, at the age of 14, my insecurity about my weight would become entangled with my gender.

In many Latino households, gender roles are made apparent at a young age.

Women would do all the cooking and cleaning. My sisters and I were expected to help, but I rarely saw male relatives in the kitchen.

For the men to do nothing much but flip a few pieces of meat on the grill seemed so unfair to me.

In fourth grade, I had learned about women’s rights and about our struggles, both past and present.

Although women have increased their presence in workforces once mostly dominated by men, women as a whole still find themselves in mostly lower-paying occupations, according to the Pew Research Center.

I didn’t want to be brutalized for being a girl.

My preexisting hatred for my body grew and I wanted to tear myself apart.

I often found myself staring at the mirror, wishing I looked like someone else — anyone else — as long as I didn’t have to look at my own face. I felt ugly.

And most of all, I didn’t want to be a girl.

In middle school, around 2020, I heard the term “transgender” and learned that it meant someone who didn’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

It made sense to me.

If I could become a boy, then maybe I would feel less insecure about my body. Maybe my self-loathing would disappear.

So, I came out to my family as transgender when I was 15, followed by cutting my hair. My family even helped me choose my new name: Arion.

I went with male pronouns, wore loose-fitting pants that didn’t emphasize my curves, and I didn’t shave.

For a time, I was happy. Being perceived as a boy and nothing else made me happy, but my weight still bothered me.

And I eventually began to question my gender once more. I was frustrated by not fitting in with any gender.

I wasn’t brave enough for the boys, and I certainly wasn’t feminine enough for the girls.

I was in the middle, but this middle ground eventually led me to learn about the term “nonbinary,” which describes someone who does not fit into the male-or-female binary.

Being nonbinary felt right, and so, for the rest of high school and during my first year of college, I identified as nonbinary.

But then, through mutual friends, I met my then-boyfriend, Damian.

At first, I was nervous about the prospects of our relationship. I saw myself as this ugly person, but Damian saw things differently.

His love steadily made me appreciate my body more and slowly realize that I was beautiful and shouldn’t believe my own negative self-perception.

A sense of security was growing around me, and I eventually began to question my gender once more. But this time, it didn’t weigh heavily on me.

After so many years of despising my body and questioning my gender, I realized that I had been hiding behind labels to shield myself from my self-loathing instead of facing my insecurities head-on.

And now, identifying as a woman no longer felt like something I should fear but rather embrace.

Nowadays, whenever I look in the mirror, I no longer see a confused girl who believed herself to be ugly for most of her life.

Rather, I see a confident and bright young woman who couldn’t be happier with herself.

I see security.