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I wonder if people notice all the pictures I take, like a teenage girl discovering selfies for the first time. Or how I posted, reposted, boosted the link to the story they did on me…as if to say, hey look at me, I am an attention whore.
This might come as a surprise but I already know this about me but I do this for reasons that other people might not so easily guess.
So the pictures, yea, well, I do have a problem with age and since I have shared so much publically I might as well share it all.
There are a lot of reasons I take and share a lot of selfies and I will try to break it down for you. First and foremost it is NOT because I am vein or conceited; in some contexts it might be the absolute opposite. When I was a child, before I knew what transgender was, before I even knew the differences between a girl and a boy, I was awkward, and fat and I was constantly being picked on and beaten up because of it.
And then as I entered into high school I lost a lot of weight and started getting attention, getting love and I quickly, right or wrong, began to believe that attractiveness is directly connected to how much people liked me.
So, yep, even back in high school I realized that one day I would have a deep, embedded fear of aging. And guess what folks, I am now at that point where I am beginning to notice all the years that have passed me by.
And then came my heart attack and my plans to commit suicide; I knew that I was not going to be here forever and I wanted something my family could look back on and say, she was happy, oh look how she changed. HOWEVER, the biggest reason for those glorified selfies go deeper. (Which I will mention at the end of this article.)
As for how I might be perceived for looking like an attention whore…
A few months Abby Austin of channel four news was filming a documentary for the BBC. A meetup invited all the transgender girls in the area to come and be a part of it. I thought it was cute and invited my son Brendan to join me.
I was probably like anyone else when I thought, I would be lucky if I get to be in one background shot while they were filming, especially since I expected a full house for the event. While I was hoping to get seen, my son Brendan was silently praying to himself, please don’t point the camera at me over and over again.
Together Brendan and I found our way to a back corner of the restaurant and quietly waited for the filming to begin. But…. without seeking it out, the crew set up the equipment facing directly at us and Abby actually spent time asking both my son and I questions about acceptance in America.
And then my wife Kimberly mentioned that I should reach out to Patrick Wojahn, my city (College Park Maryland) mayor and tell him I was available to help in any way I could. And then he met with me and offered up what little I knew about being transgender (because I was just a baby in the transgender world) He also put me in touch with one of or councilmen who ended up putting my name up for nomination to the Education Advisory Committee.
Okay, so that might sound like I did a nice thing, rather than me acting as if I am a whore for attention and if I left it like that, you would be correct.
And then came my interview for the College Park Diamondback. As soon as I read it I made a point to post it to Facebook, tweet it on twitter and I will be posting it on Kendrachelsea.com too eventually (But what the hell, here is the link in the meantime- the interview
But see I am writing about it, I have mentioned it on Facebook, I have talked to friends and coworkers about it; so you see, yes I could be perceived as someone that lives for that type of attention or even worse, someone who brags a lot…
However, I will admit that there is a small part of me that likes the spotlight on me…SMALL PART. See, the day after the interview for the newspaper occurred I had something happen to me that had not happened in a couple of months…A bad case of gender dysphoria set in. You can pretty much credit that to the fact that I put myself out there in the public eye and now I understood that a lot more eyes would be on me and in a lot of ways that scared the hell out of me. People that did not know me would now be looking at me and ultimately judging me.
So why then, do I do it? Why if it not for my fear of aging would I continually post my pictures? Why would I allow myself to once again experience the most horrid feeling of gender dysphoria if I am not, in fact, a media or attention whore?
It is and always will be about me finally being able to care, finally being able to feel empathy and to really love and care about my fellow man (or woman)
Those feelings drive me to do EVERYTHING I do. It becomes a driving force in my life every time I recall writing out my suicide notes, every time I remember how, after a massive heart attack, going to bed as I continued to feel the contractions in my chest and drifting off to sleep, thinking, this would be it, I would never wake up.
Call me a conceited bitch when I post the latest pictures of me; call me a fucking attention whore because I promote myself every chance I get. Hate me, love me, it doesn’t matter because I have an agenda. I know what I am trying to accomplish and even though Kenneth rolled over at the slightest sign of trouble, Kendra is a fucking relentless bitch, a fighter with a plan.
I will promote myself, I will experience the worst feeling any transgender girl experiences (gender dysphoria) and I will do it every single day for the rest of my life if need be, not because I desire that type of self-aggrandizing but because I believe the transgender community needs every single voice it can get.
“Hey look at me, the clown…look, look, look… Check out the new transgender suicide rates”
“Look it isn’t so bad, being a clown… Look at the morons down south, enacting war inciting bathroom laws”
“Check it out, if an aging out of shape person like me can come out to the world then anyone can. And while we are at it, look at the murder rate for transgender females”
“Check it bitches, I dress different, talk different and people still care. Oh and while you are checking it, did you know the pope believes we, the transgender, are the greatest threat to mankind since the Nazis?”
Really, for a moment think about how short life is. Imagine living that life for anyone other than yourself… How long can anyone expect you to do that? An hour, a day, a month, year... …decades? I did that, I spent decades trying not to let my mother down, decades attempting to live up to the standards of my coworkers and for what? Do you think that, even for a minute that any of them could even begin to comprehend what you have sacrificed for them?
And the sad part? The only difficult part about transitioning, the hardest hill you would have to climb is within your own mind. Transitioning is only as difficult as your imagination allows.
Hey girls, put down the pen and paper, put your gun back in your drawer and talk to someone, anyone… And if you think you are alone and don’t have the courage to ask, remember I am offering you my friendship, I am here. You can even look me up on Facebook The T in the LGBT
Of course you would have to get past the whole, teenage bitch, self-aggrandizing public spectacle that I pretend to be, if you can do that, you can do anything.
