My name is Jamie. I was born in a two bedroom apartment above a laundromat in a city that smells like rust and fast food grease. We were poor not tight budget poor, but sometimes the lights go off poor. And from the time I was maybe five years old, I knew I was not a boy. Not in the way I was supposed to be. My mom knew first because moms always know.
She never made a big deal out of it. She'd quietly let me sit next to her while she got ready, hand me her lipstick like it was the most normal thing in the world. On my seventh birthday she bought me a purple skirt from a thrift store and hid it in a shoebox. For when you need it, she said.
My dad found it once. He didn't yell he just went very quiet, which was somehow worse and threw it in the dumpster. My mom bought me another one the next week. She was the whole sky, I think you understand what I mean.
She died when I was thirteen, ovarian cancer they said. Fast and brutal and unfair in the way only real life can be. At her funeral I wore her blue dress, the one with the small white flowers. My dad didn't speak to me for three weeks. Marcus called me a freak in the parking lot, loud enough for her church friends to hear.
The next few years were just survival. I thrifted clothes that felt like me and wore them under my school clothes like armor I couldn't show anyone. I got jumped once behind the gym. My dad and I lived like two strangers sharing a refrigerator.
I was sixteen when I made a decision on the bathroom floor at 2am, I am not going to disappear into this city. I am going to build something so I had a cracked phone and a library card. I learned about e commerce. I saved up bussing tables until I had enough for my first month's subscriptions, found a supplier through zendrop, and built a tiny store selling gender neutral jewelry things I wished existed when I was twelve.
First month I made $11. I almost quit.
But I kept going, I learned SEO the hard way. I ran a $5 ad that somehow reached a small trans and non-binary community online, and I sat there at midnight watching orders come in like little heartbeats, shaking. I came out publicly at eighteen. Not in a big speech just updated my store's About page with my real name and a photo of myself wearing one of my own products, and wrote three sentences about why I built it.
The messages I got back nearly broke me open. Teenagers from small towns. Adults who'd never told anyone. A woman who said she cried reading it and didn't fully understand why.
I understood why.
If you're someone sitting on a bathroom floor at 2am making a decision I see you. Build your thing. It just has to be yours.
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