I’m From Laurel, MS – Video Story.

by Krystal Summers

Hi, my name is Krystal and I’m originally from Laurel, Mississippi. And once upon a time, I was a little boy. But I think a more accurate way of saying that is, I was a little girl trapped in a little boy’s body.

I remember I changed schools when I was in 6th grade. And the first day of school, the teacher took the whole class to the bathroom and you divide up and went to your respective bathrooms, and I of course went into the boys’ bathroom and the teacher ran in behind me and told me, “Oh, you’re in the wrong bathroom, you’re in the wrong bathroom.” And it was so embarrassing because all the kids were laughing at me.

The kids used to make fun of me at the swimming pool because I didn’t want to take my shirt off and all the other little boys would take their shirts off and go swimming. When they would play basketball and they would pick teams, there would be shirts and skins and I would not want to be on the skins team. And it was just little things like that, and I’ve been put in trash cans, I was shoved against my locker, the name calling, it’s just something I’d never want to relive again.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist family, I always knew they weren’t gonna accept me, changing from being a boy to a girl. That was something that was never gonna be acceptable to them. So I had to wait until I went to college. So the day I went to college–I graduated high school, left home immediately and went to college. My parents dropped me off at school at my first apartment and I went and got my first caboodle, bought a bunch of makeup, and I would just sit around in dresses and it was just a very happy time in my life. There weren’t a lot of instances from that point on that I ever dressed as a boy again. Except for, over the next year, year and a half, when I would go to my parents house, I would have to obviously. But once they found out, I didn’t talk to them for several years. They weren’t on-board with it. But I spent my entire life as a girl, and from that point on, I was a girl. And I do wanna add that my parents have started coming around. It’s taken almost 10, 11 years to come around but they’re finally starting to accept me for who I am. And that is just the cherry on top of the cake, you know, it’s just awesome.

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