ANDREW
OKLAHOMA | SERIES # 4
My name is Andrew Hedges, I am 21 years old, Pansexual and FTM, and I use He/Him pronouns.
I started out like an average kid. I loved recess, playing video games and trying to live up to my big brother. The one problem was that I was born female, and in Oklahoma, young girls live to an expectation of maintaining traditional gender roles. I was not the one to stick to my "assigned role" that was attached to me at birth. Because of this, I had a lot of confusion and an internal battle with my gender all the way till the summer after my Senior year of High School. After working at a summer camp in New Mexico I read the book "Some Assembly Required" and related to it on such a level and knew that this is what I was missing, this was the piece of me that I suppressed for so long. Now I have been out for two years and living as a male which has proven time and again that I am happier and healthier than I ever would have been.
When I was 13 my family decided it was best to send me to a well known conversion therapist in Oklahoma.The only thing that did was make me more depressed and more confused on who I was. Later on, while I was 16 attending my third year at camp, I asked, "How can I be gay and love God?" My response was "You can not". Because of that the rest of camp was moved cabins, I had to shower and use the bathroom at separate times, and had extra talking time with the camp counselors and head staff over why homosexuality is a sin. These two events really pushed me into the research I am currently conducting in college, an oral history documentary on conversion therapy in the United States.
I am a student at the University of Central Oklahoma where I study Psychology/ Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
If I could give any advice or words of wisdom it would be, always live authentically. Stay true to yourself, love yourself, and no matter what, don't ever let anyone tell you that you're lesser then because of who you are. You are loved truly and deeply, by me and so many others.
