Dear Dorothy,
I wonder what it was like to go on that great big adventure to Oz, to just end up right back where you started.
Ten years ago I ran away from home. I never wanted to leave but Bend wasn’t safe, not for someone like me. I’ll never forget the first time I met someone else who’s transgender. I was a teenager working as a fitting room attendant when she came in, surrounded by friends to try on a whole new wardrobe. I wasn’t out back then, not publicly anyway. I kept trying to be but my family forced my silence. I hadn’t even realized I had just met someone like me for the first time, not when I counted her items, not when I held out her numbered card to her, not as she and her friends passed me and walked back together into the fitting room. It wasn’t until I heard her speak, heard her laugh, heard the other women laugh with her, did I realize.
I recall standing there, staring forward beneath the oppressive overhead fluorescent lighting, smiling and trying to hold back tears. She doesn’t remember me, surely, but I’ll never forget her. Never forget how happy she was, how loving her friends were, how she smiled when she walked off with her new dresses. She gave me hope that day that somehow, someway, someday, things would be okay.
It wasn’t long after that my opportunity to run away to my Emerald City presented itself and I took it, spending ten years in Portland. But there was always a longing in me to come home. I just thought I couldn’t. It was during a summer visit that I saw something that changed everything. It stopped me dead in my tracks, mid-word: a pride flag sticker affixed to the window of a downtown business. And while that alone was earth-shattering–in my nearly two decades living here I had never seen a single pride flag–imagine my surprise when I saw one on the next window, and the next, and the next. Suddenly, I was surrounded by them.
It was then that I realized. Maybe I could finally come home, just like you.
While there is no place like home, Bend still has a long way to go. Things are much different, far more than they were ten years ago. But that didn’t happen on its own. Change happened because the people who saw the same things I did, who felt afraid and unsafe, didn’t run away. They chose to stay– their efforts made Bend what it is today.
As I stand here at the end of my yellow brick road, I hold a guilt with me for leaving and a deep respect and gratitude to those who didn’t. I didn’t want to go somewhere better, I wanted Bend to be better. I can’t change the fact that I ran away, but now that I’m back I’m going to do everything I can to help. We face profoundly hard times in the shadow of a regime that wants us gone. But as long as we fight, as long as we stay, I’m sure that together, we can create a better someday, somewhere over the rainbow.
Forever Yours,
A Friend of Dorothy
