I am Selena, a 31-year-old transgender woman. I’m goal-oriented, hardworking. A woman that is not scared of problems. I’m neither uptight, nor easygoing; I’m just straightforward, which is something that many might not like.
I don’t really remember my childhood in much detail. I lived in Kutaisi with my family. I would make my mom angry a lot, I was never a calm child. I went through abuse as well, about which I spoke once on a TV show, but it’s a painful subject and I don’t want to be remembering the details now.
As for the discovery of my identity, I didn’t have a kind of a “this is me” moment. This was preceded by a lot of other stages and so much confusion. At some point, you know that you now understand it all, but it’s a negative feeling, to feel that people are scared of you. I never publicly came out as a transgender woman. A funny thing happened to me – my friend accidentally posted a photo of me on social media, in which I had red nail polish which we noticed too late, and that’s how my mom found out.
My transitioning began years ago in Turkey, with an old friend of mine, whom I met there. She is also a transgender woman and we’re still friends to this day. Going through the stages and getting to the last levels of transitioning is just like setting goals – if you want to, you can achieve them, and if you give up – it’ll never work. I don’t remember the exact dates. I took my first steps there – I got my first operations and, surprisingly enough, I got used to the free environment very fast, living there was quite enjoyable. When I came back to Georgia, I got really stressed out. I locked myself in; Nothing good ever happened, I was just constantly stuck at home. Sometimes my friends would come to visit. In fact, for a transgender woman living in Georgia, as a sex worker – there is no joy in life, it’s all just stress. Of course, there are plenty of problems in Georgia. There are a lot of obstacles in the society. Even if I don’t get murdered, it doesn’t mean that other people won’t be murdered or abused. During work, I always have a fear that someone will attack me. Who should I hope for to help me at this time? The police? It’s impossible to think that they’ll help me, because most of them are abusers themselves.
Finally, I came to a conclusion, that people change. I can’t be a sex-worker forever. This wasn’t my life. I didn’t want to spend my life doing that, so I decided to leave the country, together with my friends. This wasn’t an easy decision. Just momentarily leaving your country and knowing that you’ll never see the people that you love. But I needed to leave in order to survive and make a better life for myself. Besides, the main reasons to leave Georgia were the recent events that took place, especially in the summer. That was when I realized that this wasn’t just about the LGBTQ+ community, it was just about anyone that’s different.
So many things have changed after I left. It’s like I was reborn. Of course, there are homophobes in every country. No one is really obligated to like and love you, but here, everyone respects you, the law does its job and no one can do anything to you. Most importantly – they view you as a person. People are really nice here. We have an adorable assistant, a very lovely person that often invites us to her family. Of course, everyone needs to adapt, once they find themselves in a foreign environment. I’m not even considering to come back to Georgia, but maybe, years later, I’ll come to visit for a few days. I’m not planning on it anytime soon.
I want to tell the queers of Georgia that when you can see that you’re fighting for your life and everyone is against you, leaving the country isn’t running away, it’s saving your life. This is survival. If someone wants a peaceful life, they should go to another country and use this chance. I would also say that they should do things the way they deem necessary. It doesn’t matter what people will say. You might have to lose the people who mean a lot to you at some point, but it’s okay, because we weren’t born in order to be the way others want us to be. It’s a difficult path, but it’s worth it.
I’m not saying, of course, that everyone should leave the country. It’s just that a lot of people do not have this information and to leave, to experience personal growth, and maybe even return and some point – isn’t the same as running away. I didn’t run away, I saved my life, and I went to a place where my life is worth something, and I didn’t stay in Georgia where other people get to decide if I should live or not.
