How I Knew (Becoming Trans In Eight Episodes)

(Lena Balk, Upsplash)

1: Two Spaldeens

I was about five years old, give or take a year. It was a typical New York summer day: sunny, hazy, humid but not insufferably so. I was not much of an outdoor kid, being bookish and precociously (i.e., annoyingly) talkative, but that day I was playing outside vigorously, bouncing pink rubber Spaldeen balls against the garage door and trying to catch them as they came…