From Bad Habit Quotes

“My thoughts continued to reject any precise outline of self acceptance. But that wasn’t something I could fight against; all I could do is hide until one day it blew up in my face.

What terrified me was other peoples reactions, the way they spoke about something so lovely. The contempt in their voices, the repulsion they seemed to feel. It was those overheard conversations, the ones you pretend not to be listening to, that convinced me I was a creature who had to hide away.

Discovering one’s self should be cause for celebration; the public release from a suffocating space should be met with hugs and relief.

I discovered that, although elusive and fleeting, gender, euphoria did exist, and it was bursting out everywhere from inside me. In that bedroom, during that encounter, I didn’t want to be anyone else but me, for the first time in my life

I never felt so strong and so vulnerable at the same time. How could something so beautiful, something so personal and so extraordinary to share with the world, something that vibrated with pure joy, be perceived with such hostility out there?”
― Alana S. Portero

“Dysphoria, which I didn’t even have a name for, took up so much mental space and created so much physical displeasure already at only nine friggin years old there was hardly any room for anything else”
― Alana S. Portero

“It was in front of the mirror that I learned to look at myself without seeing myself. To be an automaton.”
― Alana S. Portero