Open Letter of Resignation

To whom it may concern, and it should concern you,

I resign.

Not from a job, or a role I ever applied for, but from the unpaid, unchosen, unrelenting labor of constantly proving my humanity. I resign from being the translator of my existence, the shield for your discomfort, the crash test dummy for your delayed empathy. I resign from surviving the world you made me walk through just to ask, politely, if I could be seen.

I resign from the slow, grinding grief of carrying every weight you won’t name: the legacy of generational trauma, the breathless dodge of systemic harm, the careful calibration of my tone so you’ll still hear me. I resign from being expected to unearth my pain only when it's convenient for your narrative, only when it makes you look brave for witnessing it.

I resign from the gender you assigned to keep me digestible. From the masculinity you gave me, that only knows how to choke softness out of survival. From the silence you reward and the pain you monetize. I resign from having to perform an identity in a way that makes you more comfortable than me.

I resign from hearing my existence in headlines meant to make me a threat. From watching my existence reduced to political strategy, to voter bait, to debate fodder. From seeing my child debated like a policy, their joy treated as provocation. From watching the world contort to make monsters out of people like us, just so it can pretend it’s safe.

I resign from being told to "wait it out." From being handed hope like a leash. From being expected to be grateful for scraps of humanity, for representation that ends in death, for allies who disappear when it's inconvenient.

I resign from shouldering the blame for wounds I didn’t open, but was still told to stitch closed. I resign from having to know the law better than the lawmakers, from planning my routes like an escape plan, from worrying if the doctor I see will care more about my diagnosis than my dignity.

I resign from smiling when I’m scared. I resign from being brave on cue. I resign from dressing down my fear so that it doesn’t make you uncomfortable.

And if it makes you uncomfortable to read this, good. It means you’ve been comfortable for too long.

You have built an entire machine on my compliance. You oil its gears with shame and call it structure. You make survival a performance and call it resilience. You let me burn out and then praise the smoke.

So hear me now, as clearly as I’ve learned to speak: I resign from the fight.

Not because I am defeated, but because I was never meant to be at war with myself. Because I was never supposed to be a martyr just to be called human. Because you do not get to ask me for my story, my labor, my grief, and then discard me when it no longer serves you.

I resign because survival is not a long-term life plan. Because I want to live. Because I want more than a pulse, I want presence. I want to witness my child become everything the world told me not to be, and I want to help build a world that won’t make them apologize for it.

I resign from holding the line, so I can start laying a foundation. Not just for me, but for the ones still coming. For the ones who haven’t found the words yet. For the ones too tired to carry another banner, another binder full of legislation, another protest chant sung through bloodied lips.

I am not retreating. I am rerouting.

I will grow something softer than your hatred can uproot. I will build a space where trans joy is not radical, where disability is not a burden, where rest is not a luxury but a right. I will build it in soil that was never meant to hold us, and I will make it bloom anyway.

I am learning to reclaim softness as strength. To build community not from shared pain, but from shared dreaming. To make a life where the future doesn’t require sacrifice to be possible. I am done making myself smaller to fit into boxes you’ve already set on fire.

I will make warmth the resistance. I will make community the answer. I will make enough room for my family, for my friends, for the ones you are trying to erase. I will make enough room for myself.

You cannot have my fire anymore.

Sincerely

— A transgender anarchist.