Michel Lee Garrett: Gender-affirming care saved my life. Anti-trans policies would end it.

My life pre-transition was defined by deep depression. A profound emptiness, wrongness and passive suicidality suffused every day. I saw therapists. I saw psychiatrists. I took anti-depressants. I still hated myself. I still wanted to die.

Only in my late 20s, when I finally opened up to my therapist and my now-wife about my desire to live as a woman, did I see a light at the end of the tunnel — the possibility that maybe I could finally live and be happy.

This desire to live as a woman — to live as my true gender — had been with me my entire life. One of my earliest childhood memories was being told at 4 years old I couldn’t wear a flower behind my ear because that was for girls: The first time I became aware there was a way I “was” and “wasn’t” supposed to be due to gender. I vividly recall the injustice and sorrow I felt.

I have always been trans, even before I could articulate it.

When I finally started gender-affirming care by taking feminine hormones, my entire life changed. The suicidality receded immediately. I felt such joy and such correctness in a way I had never experienced before. I became a better, more loving, more supportive partner. I became a better, more patient parent to my stepchildren. I became a better, more productive, more focused team member at work.

I didn’t just become a better version of myself. I finally became myself, my true self, for the first time in my life. For the first time, I wanted to build a future. I wanted to live.

Gender-affirming care saved my life.

Last month, after four years on hormones, I made the decision to undergo gender-affirming bottom surgery. For those unfamiliar with that term, I underwent a vaginoplasty.

The relief and joy I felt upon waking up and seeing my new, correct body for the first time was profound and deeply life-affirming. As a person of faith, it was the feeling of my spirit and my body finally being wholly aligned for the first time in my life.

Unfortunately, the ability for transgender people to feel this kind of life-affirming joy is under assault. Executive orders and legislation targeting gender-affirming care are actively working to rip this lifesaving medical care away from trans people, condemning them to the darkness, despair and suicidality I worked so hard to overcome.

Gender-affirming care is safe, reputable, lifesaving medical treatment endorsed by every major medical association, including for trans youth: the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics and more.

The federal budget bill passed by the House, and currently pending in the Senate, would end Medicaid payments for gender-affirming medical care for all ages, including adults — thereby ripping lifesaving medical treatment away from thousands of trans Americans.

This is the latest in a series of increasingly brazen attempts to outright eliminate gender-affirming care wholesale. Their end goal is clear: eliminate gender-affirming care and eliminate transgender people.

As someone who has had bottom surgery, I no longer produce notable levels of testosterone — meaning I need my estrogen prescription to maintain healthy levels of a primary sex hormone in my body.

If I lose access to my estrogen due to anti-trans policies, I will have no primary sex hormone in my body at all, which comes with a range of significant negative health impacts. If I lose access to my estrogen, my body will not be able to function.

If anti-trans policies are successful in ripping away my gender-affirming care, I will die.

And that’s the point. These policies kill trans people.

But, even knowing this, I chose to get my bottom surgery. Because this is who I am. Because this is who I have always been. Because I would rather die as who I am than live as something I’m not.

Trans people deserve the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as all people. Gender-affirming care is life. Gender-affirming care is liberty. Gender-affirming care is our pursuit of happiness.

Please stand up for trans lives, and please demand our elected officials do the same.

Michel Lee Garrett is a transgender woman, author, poet and communications professional who lives in State College. She is a board member for the nonprofit organization Centre LGBT+, a role in which she advocates for the rights of queer and trans people.