By Laura Brummett
Imaginary grid lines split her leg into six sections. Her target, the middle section of the outside of her thigh, about an inch away from a small freckle.
AJ Briggs loaded the syringe, and took a deep breath. She held the needle poised over her leg for the first time, trying not to shake.
“Three, two, one,” Briggs counted aloud, and then stabbed.
She hit her target.
Pain came first, as expected, but excitement overshadowed all other feelings in her body. The pain would last for several days, but the overwhelming relief was the only thing that mattered. For Briggs, this was surreal.
It then occurred to her that the next time she would have to stab herself would be during spring break. Briggs was going on a camping trip with her school’s rock climbing team.
Her friends on the team still called her Abbey, her birth name.
When she started at UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall, Briggs finally had the courage to go by her preferred name, AJ.
However, a high school friend joined the climbing team with her, and continued to use Abbey. Briggs couldn’t bring herself to correct them.
To her longtime friends and the climbing team, she was still Abbey. To her family, she was still Abbey Anne. But to herself, and any new acquaintances, she was AJ.
Finding her identity
For the first two years of high school, Briggs struggled to convince herself that she was truly straight and actually enjoyed wearing dresses.
She thought she had a crush on a boy named Alex Pryzbylo, and even asked him to her school dance their first year.
They posed awkwardly together for pictures before the dance, their arms barely touching. Briggs stood with her hands by her sides and her shoulders slightly hunched, her long hair slightly curled at the ends.
Contrasting her black lace dress, she wore a bulky white watch on her wrist. It was her only piece of jewelry.
By Briggs’s senior year of high school, she was comfortable enough in her own style to wear a tuxedo to prom.
This time, her girlfriend, Lauren Levin, was her date. Their arms were wrapped around each other in every photo.
Despite preferring masculine clothing since fifth grade, it took Briggs most of high school to let go of the stereotypes expected by her family and society.
“She felt pressured to be the same image everyone had seen her as,” Levin said. “She was mostly pleasing other people and not wanting to stand out.”
Expressing her true self
Briggs now keeps her hair closely shaved on the sides, while letting the curls on the top of her head loose. She regularly wears flannels, men’s jeans and checkered Vans.
Underneath her loose T-shirts, Briggs’s ribs are squeezed tight, making her lungs feel cramped. Slightly moving her arm reminds her of the blisters hiding underneath her armpits.
The sight of her own chest disgusts her, so she keeps it tightly compressed in chest binding tank tops or elastic tape.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to be on my body,” Briggs said. “Sometimes it gets so bad that I want to rip my skin off.”
She squirrels all her money away in a large, keypad-protected safe in her dorm room. One day, she’ll have enough money to get transmasculine top surgery, and finally have a chest that she can be proud of.
Even after her careful steps to conceal her chest, she still knows it’s there. Constantly aware of its existence, and her inability to change her feminine features.
In public, the conscious thought that her chest might be noticeable haunts Briggs. She continuously pulls at her shirt, wanting to appear masculine.
While on a beach trip last summer with her friend Marian Gallis, Briggs walked into the women’s bathroom wearing gray basketball shorts and a tank top.
A woman in the bathroom immediately stopped and looked Briggs up and down.
“Are you looking for the men’s room?” the woman said.
The question shocked Briggs, and she awkwardly told the woman no.
“I was alarmed at how quickly people are to assume things about people,” Gallis said. “I’m 100 percent sure Abbey knew where she needed to be.”
Now every time she opens a bathroom door, Briggs questions if her presence is making others uncomfortable.
She avoids drinking water during classes so that she doesn’t have to face awkward looks from other people.
Appearance is everything
For Briggs, there is a fine, but distinct, line between appearing masculine and being a man.
On the first day of her psychology class in January, a student assumed Briggs preferred male pronouns. She addressed Briggs as a boy in front of the everyone, and now the entire class assumes she’s a boy too.
She doesn’t mind being classified as male by strangers, and even takes pride in it sometimes. But in her heart, Briggs knows she is not, and will never be a man.
Appearing masculine is what’s important to her, not specifying certain pronouns.
“That’s what makes me feel good,” Briggs said. “It’s how I feel comfortable.”
However, to Briggs, feeling comfortable is not worth the risk of losing friends. She avoids correcting people who still call her Abbey, afraid of jeopardizing relationships.
“I’m terrified to tell other people especially, people I’ve known for a while, that I’m not exactly what they thought I was,” Briggs said.
The image of who Briggs used to be is a safety blanket she keeps tucked away in the back of her mind.
Confronting her family
Around her family and old friends, she knows that as long as she continues to be Abbey, they will support her. The girl with long hair, slightly curled at the ends, standing in a black lace dress beside a boy, will always be accepted.
As she met more people in college who have only known her as AJ, Briggs slowly became more comfortable in herself.
She went home one weekend in February to take a break from dining hall food, and to visit her family.
She sat in her room that Saturday night, staring at a blank sheet of paper. She had known that she wanted to start taking testosterone for months, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her mom.
She had settled on writing her a letter explaining how she couldn’t stand living in her own, non-masculine body, but now, the fear was getting too real.
She didn’t want to see the look of disappointment in her mother’s eyes.
When she finally finished the letter, she handed it to her mom and sprinted away back to the safety of her room. This way, she didn’t have to look at her face while she read it.
Though not thrilled, her mom agreed to let Briggs take a step toward being happier in her own body.
A week and a half later, Briggs was in a doctor’s office giving herself the first shot of testosterone. Broader shoulders, a more chiseled jaw line and a deeper voice would soon confirm her masculine identity.
The dream that had seemed so far off to her for so long had become a reality.
Edited by Nick Thompson