March 1, 2022 • 25 mins
Emmy's new love, Adam, adores one version of Emmy, but wants her to hide everything else. Unfortunately, Emmy is used to hiding.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast has mature content and language that may not
be appropriate for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Episode three,
I didn't seek Everyone has secrets. I'm really good at
keeping secrets. I feel like I've practiced my whole life.
(00:25):
Sometimes it's a coping mechanism. Other times keeping a secret
is the only way to get what you want. After
I broke up with Ryan, what I wanted was to
find fireworks. I wanted more. I wanted to find a
(00:47):
deeper relationship someone I connected with. I was feeling good
about myself, like I deserved to get what I wanted,
like you would in my reach, but I didn't know
what it would cost. I am Emmy and this is Crumbs,
(01:13):
my love story. It's a show about the things we
settle for and the bits of ourselves that make us
who we are. Emmy fun loving student looking for sober
(01:35):
adventures and romance. I was in college in this little
town called Pomona, which is right outside of Los Angeles,
and on the weekends I would travel to San Diego,
Dio visit my family. I was experimenting with dating apps.
Now this was before Tinder was a thing, so I
(01:58):
think I was on okay, Cupid or Plenty of Fish
one of those two. On one of my trips to
San Diego, I matched with this guy named Adam when
I was back in Pomona. We started to text and
I did my standard thing. I told him I was
trans and I waited for his response. I shared this
(02:25):
information every time I matched with someone, and it was
getting really exhausting, not the sharing, the waiting, never knowing
what kind of response I'd get. It could be fun,
the pate speech, a creepy, fetishy message, or just being ghosted.
(02:46):
But to me, not telling my matches is even scarier
because what if I go on a date with them
and then I get that hate in person? But um,
his response was I don't see why that should be
an issue. As crazy as this sounds, it was a
(03:09):
really big deal. A lot of the matches that I
was getting on these dating apps, people were just spetish
sizing me. I was like an experiment. These men who
(03:30):
have these ideologies of like, Okay, if I'm with the
trans woman, does that make me gay? Does that make
me buy? Like? They have like these thoughts that they're
fighting in their head, and so yes, we're gonna have
a casual hook up, but it's got to be so
hush hush. I think that's what tears out my soul,
knowing that you are not okay with being seen with
(03:53):
me in public. So with Adam, he wanted to go
on a date. He wanted to meet in a public place.
He said, when are you coming to San Diego next?
And I happened to be going that weekend. He says,
(04:14):
why don't you meet me at this hookah spot that
I know. So I got in my little Toyota Corolla
and I drove down the fift South heading to San
Diego and I see this guy. He's just leaning on
(04:35):
the wall with his foot up on the wall, and
I'm like, that's him. He opens the door to the
hookah lounge. We walk in and everybody knows him. They're like, hey,
I do him? Hows going? This guy's bringing me to
(04:57):
a hang out that he is a regular at. That
told me that he wasn't embarrassed to parade me around,
that he wasn't hung up on me being a trans woman.
I felt very comfortable right away. Adam had this vibe
(05:18):
about him. He seemed like like a little rich boy.
I learned that his father was a doctor, he had
his own practice. His mom was a psychologist. He's asking
me things about my family, like, oh, you know, what
are your parents do? And I'm like, oh, ship, shame right,
(05:40):
because my mom's in prison, my dad's out tweaking somewhere
under a bridge or something. I don't want to get
into that, so I right away start with a lie, Oh,
you know, I'm not very close to my family. I
don't really know like what they're up to. M And
(06:01):
he believed me, and I just got the feeling that
it was better that way. He came from a very
conservative family. He looked like the Brady Bunch family that
I wanted so badly. Bright he came from his parents
(06:25):
were married, his parents who were successful. He had a
good upbringing, he was well mannered. The outsides looked really good.
I was attracted to him, to the whole family picture,
and we were getting pretty serious, dating all the time
(06:46):
and not dating anyone else. He'd invite me over to
have dinner with his family, and that made me feel
very good. But I knew that Adam hadn't a one
that I was transgender, and I was nervous to go
to his house for dinner because his dad was a doctor.
(07:09):
Would he noticed something about me and my features, my body.
I don't know something that would give it away. Adam said,
if this question ever comes up, deny, deny, deny. They
were right wing conservatives, so I knew that me being
transgender wasn't something that they were going to accept, but
(07:32):
I had never been told that I had to actively lie, deny, deny, deny,
just like Adam said. At the time, I said, I understood,
and I agreed to lie. No. No, what no? And
(07:57):
I remember I think I asked Adam on an occasion,
what would your parents think, and he said, oh, well,
they'd have a problem with it because my older brother
is gay and they just can't seem to accept that,
especially my father. So they were already dealing with that
(08:19):
prejudice within their own family. Adam was her baby, and
so Adam, I think, felt the need to protect that
and I had to play along. I had just celebrated
(08:45):
five years of sobriety, and he would tell me things like, well,
you know, maybe you don't need your Tolster program anymore.
You've been sober for five years, like you got it
from here, And I started drifting away for my program slowly,
because I want him to like me. I want him
(09:06):
to think that I'm strong, that I want what he wants.
Obama was in office and all he did was talk
about Obama. He've had cardboard cutouts of Obama and he
shoot pellets at him in his backyard. That I stopped
(09:31):
voicing any sort of opinions that I may have, political
or religious. I I'm ashamed of my family, so he
never meets anyone. Eventually, I had to tell him that
my mom was in prison, and right away, I'm like, yeah,
(09:53):
but I don't have a relationship with her. Don't worry
because I don't want him to think bless of me.
And he responds, yeah, that makes total sense. She sounds
like bad news. So I keep lying. I was taking
(10:16):
estrogen shots, right, so I'd get my estrogen shot and
then I'd go see Adam, and you know, I get
some side effects from estrogen shots, hot flashes, nausea. So
he said, oh, no, I understand, I understand your side effects.
I get side effects from the saucer into Adam had
(10:40):
secrets too, behind my back. He'd been taking steroids for bodybuilding. Well.
His major side effect was anger. He starts having these
like bouts of rage. I didn't want the situation to escalate,
so I just quiet and didn't say anything. Are you
(11:05):
sensing a pattern? I started carrying secrets from a very
young age. I think I started keeping secrets just because
(11:28):
I got the sense that my grandma didn't want these
things to be known. I remember being about six years old,
my grandma was starting a bath for me, and you know,
just being a curious little kid that I was, I
was always going through things and going through drawers, and
(11:48):
I remember looking behind the toilet and seeing something shiny
that just called my attention. And I picked it up
and it was a piece of tinfoil and I showed
it to my grandmother and I'm like, what is this?
And she freaked out. She's like, oh my god, this
is drugs. This is what heroine looks like, you know.
(12:10):
And she opened it and I saw the dark residue
on it, and she's like, you have to be on
the lookout for these kinds of things because you sat
the drugs that your mom takes. So you have to
tell me when you find something like this, tell me immediately,
but don't tell anyone else, not your aunt's not your mom, nobody.
(12:34):
This is a secret. And so that was like when
I started becoming my grandmother's little spy. I think there
was a lot of prejudice from my mom's sisters just
because she was a drug addict, and I think my
(12:58):
grandmother in a way felt she about hurt that. So
I had to keep those secrets. And then there was
this other lingering secret all through my life about who
I was. It actually didn't start out as much of
a secret. Mammy Leacha was proud of who I was,
(13:21):
the same grandmother who made me light to my mom,
who made me keep secrets about her drug use. She
had no shame at all about who I was. So
as a kid, as a toddler, I had long, curly
(13:42):
hair and it was very light. It was almost as
light as Mammy Lecha's hair. You know. She always had
these up dudes and a lot of AquaNet in her hair,
and always had makeup on, and she had these really
nice silk dresses that I remember her wearing, and she
was just always so well put together, and I remember
(14:07):
just admiring that. It was like I just wanted to
be elegant like her. She would let me play with dolls.
She would buy me dolls, and she let me really
just be myself. She didn't have a problem with that,
(14:28):
at least that's the feeling that I got. I remember
this was when like he Man and Sheira were thing,
and I wanted to play with she was so bad,
and so my grandmother bought me Sheira and she let
me play with whatever dolls I wanted. And my aunt
would come and she would tell my grandmother, like, don't
buy him those girl toys. He's a boy like, and
(14:50):
she would bring me boy toys like cars and play
guns and you know, little boy toys, and she'd throw
away my dolls. When my grandmother would get so mad
and she tell her, like, just let him be himself.
But I stopped living with my militia when I was seven.
(15:11):
I moved in with my dad's mom my nana, and
I got a different message. I wanted to learn how
to play the piano, learn how to play a guitar.
I think because I was a very feminine little boy,
there was always that fear that I was going to
(15:33):
be gay. I used to love to dance, I used
to love to singing. I used to be very creative
and artistic. And right away, like if you're suspected of
being very feminine or or gay, like it's like, okay,
let's like not let you dance, or let's not let
(15:53):
you play a guitar or be artistic, kind of trying
to steer me into their in direction, away from who
I actually was. Like I stopped dancing completely when I
was probably around twelve because my no, she would tell
(16:13):
me that I danced like a woman, and don't move
like that, that's too feminine. So I stopped dancing all together.
And now if I try dancing like, I can't do it.
I have zero rhythm, zero coordination. M I think he
(16:36):
was in my teenage years when they finally realized that, okay,
he's gay, because I started plucking my eyebrows and I
started just being into more feminine things. And like I said,
I've never been masculine, so I couldn't really passed as
like a masculine straight guy. That that just wasn't me.
(17:00):
I didn't even like calling myself a boy. It was
uncomfortable to call myself a boy. I couldn't really be
myself around my family. There was this unspoken don't ask,
ston't tell policy in the beginning of my transition, I
(17:21):
didn't really have a support system or you know, trans
friends that I could pick their brains. I didn't have that.
I couldn't did all on my own, and so just
everything that I researched on the internet and just you know,
I also I was in therapy at the time, so
(17:41):
I was having these deep conversations with my therapists, my
psychologist about this um. I was mentally prepared to be
cut off by the family because that's what I had
read so much online, That's what my therapist said might happen,
and so I was mentally prepared to just be cut off.
(18:13):
I think what made me most nervous was that, you know,
I grew up with this idea that appearance and image
and reputation is everything. And my grandmother always up how
like her image, and she carried herself a certain way,
and she looked a certain way. So I felt that
I didn't want to add on to like the shame
(18:35):
of like what we had already been through as a family.
So I carried that like just assuming that you know,
maybe she'd be ashamed or embarrassed. And I carried a
shame for so many years after that into my adult life,
into my professional life, like not being open about who
(18:57):
I was from the get go because I didn't want
to be discriminated against, and I didn't want to be
talked about. It was just such a heavy burden to have,
you know, it started eating at me. Adam accepted me
(19:34):
for himself right. He was proud to call me his
girlfriend and took me on trips and paraded me around town.
He was fine accepting me as what I passed as
a woman, as long as people around him, especially his family,
thought that I was assist woman. He was good. I'm
(19:56):
in this relationship with this person who says he loves me,
but have to hide everything that I am. I have
to hide that my mom is in prison. I have
to cover my tattoos. I can't voice my political beliefs.
I have to hide the fact that I'm transgender. So
(20:17):
it was almost like I was just there to adorn
him and make him look good. I mean, he told me, oh, my,
my father thinks you're so pretty. He thinks you have
this sexy latina with big boobs and he likes you.
Sounds a little weird, I know. I remember one night
(20:45):
we were driving to his parents house. We stopped at
Starbucks on the way and something was bothering me. Maybe
it was Adam. So at Starbucks, I got a latte
and drinking in the car ride. As soon as we
got to his parents house, I started itching, like really itching.
(21:11):
I broke out in hives. My throat started swelling. And
I'm not allergic to milk. I'm supposed to always carrying
up a pen because I'm allergic to shellfish, but there
was definitely no shell fish in my latte. And then
I have an EpiPen with me anyways, so I started
(21:32):
scratching my head. I became really itchy, like if I
have a thousand ants in my head, and I start
feeling my heart beat really really fast. My throat starts
closing a little bit. I started getting these hives around
my face. My I start swelling. I started looking deformed,
(21:56):
and right away, you know, He's like, let me get
you some ban and drills. So he gives me and Drew.
He calls his dad to come check on me, his dad,
the doctor. He tells me his dad's coming upstairs, and
I looked at him and like, Adam, what if he
like checks me, like he's gonna he's gonna feel me.
(22:23):
And I hear his footsteps on the stairs. So as
Adam's dad is examining my body. You right, he's putting
his hands around my neck to feel my lymph nodes.
I don't want him to feel my throat. I don't
want him to feel my Adam's apple. He's feeling my chest,
(22:48):
seeing if I'm breathing regularly, and I get so scared.
I started thinking, this man, he's a doctor, he's smart.
If he doesn't know, he's gonna definitely know. After this,
(23:08):
I'm more concerned about taking care of his image that
his family has of him than taking care of my
own health. Not long after that, Adam and I broke up.
(23:29):
It wasn't that day that caused the breakup, as far
as I know, his dad never found out, and I
never told Adam how painful that experience was. We broke
up after some other disagreement. But looking back, I think
this was a really important day. All I can say
(23:54):
is I was young and dumb, and I wanted to
fit in, and I wanted to be liked, and I
wanted to be part of the Brady Bench family. It's ridiculous.
I felt a need to protect him. Today, I feel like,
oh my god, how could you have done that, sacrifice
who you are just to save someone's reputation, all because
(24:19):
you wanted to be a part of it. I didn't
want to sacrifice myself. I hated hiding, and after Adam,
I didn't want to be forced into secrecy all over again.
So I made some changes. That's next time on Crumbs.
(24:51):
Crumbs is the production of I Heart Radios Michael Lua
podcast Network in association with Trojan Horse. It's produced by
Margaret Catcher and edited by Jazzmin Rometto and Alex Fumeto.
Original music by Daniel Peter Schmidt and engineering by Manuel
(25:11):
Executive produced by Gisevances and Conno Burn for I Heeart,
Alex Bumeto for Trojan Horse, Joshua Weinstein, Jazzmindrometo, Camilla and
and me Emio LEA special thanks to Monissa Hendrix, Fernand
Estrava and Sara Mota. Listen to Crumbs on the I
(25:33):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This podcast has mature content and language that may not
be appropriate for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Episode three,
I didn't seek Everyone has secrets. I'm really good at
keeping secrets. I feel like I've practiced my whole life.
(00:25):
Sometimes it's a coping mechanism. Other times keeping a secret
is the only way to get what you want. After
I broke up with Ryan, what I wanted was to
find fireworks. I wanted more. I wanted to find a
(00:47):
deeper relationship someone I connected with. I was feeling good
about myself, like I deserved to get what I wanted,
like you would in my reach, but I didn't know
what it would cost. I am Emmy and this is Crumbs,
(01:13):
my love story. It's a show about the things we
settle for and the bits of ourselves that make us
who we are. Emmy fun loving student looking for sober
(01:35):
adventures and romance. I was in college in this little
town called Pomona, which is right outside of Los Angeles,
and on the weekends I would travel to San Diego,
Dio visit my family. I was experimenting with dating apps.
Now this was before Tinder was a thing, so I
(01:58):
think I was on okay, Cupid or Plenty of Fish
one of those two. On one of my trips to
San Diego, I matched with this guy named Adam when
I was back in Pomona. We started to text and
I did my standard thing. I told him I was
trans and I waited for his response. I shared this
(02:25):
information every time I matched with someone, and it was
getting really exhausting, not the sharing, the waiting, never knowing
what kind of response I'd get. It could be fun,
the pate speech, a creepy, fetishy message, or just being ghosted.
(02:46):
But to me, not telling my matches is even scarier
because what if I go on a date with them
and then I get that hate in person? But um,
his response was I don't see why that should be
an issue. As crazy as this sounds, it was a
(03:09):
really big deal. A lot of the matches that I
was getting on these dating apps, people were just spetish
sizing me. I was like an experiment. These men who
(03:30):
have these ideologies of like, Okay, if I'm with the
trans woman, does that make me gay? Does that make
me buy? Like? They have like these thoughts that they're
fighting in their head, and so yes, we're gonna have
a casual hook up, but it's got to be so
hush hush. I think that's what tears out my soul,
knowing that you are not okay with being seen with
(03:53):
me in public. So with Adam, he wanted to go
on a date. He wanted to meet in a public place.
He said, when are you coming to San Diego next?
And I happened to be going that weekend. He says,
(04:14):
why don't you meet me at this hookah spot that
I know. So I got in my little Toyota Corolla
and I drove down the fift South heading to San
Diego and I see this guy. He's just leaning on
(04:35):
the wall with his foot up on the wall, and
I'm like, that's him. He opens the door to the
hookah lounge. We walk in and everybody knows him. They're like, hey,
I do him? Hows going? This guy's bringing me to
(04:57):
a hang out that he is a regular at. That
told me that he wasn't embarrassed to parade me around,
that he wasn't hung up on me being a trans woman.
I felt very comfortable right away. Adam had this vibe
(05:18):
about him. He seemed like like a little rich boy.
I learned that his father was a doctor, he had
his own practice. His mom was a psychologist. He's asking
me things about my family, like, oh, you know, what
are your parents do? And I'm like, oh, ship, shame right,
(05:40):
because my mom's in prison, my dad's out tweaking somewhere
under a bridge or something. I don't want to get
into that, so I right away start with a lie, Oh,
you know, I'm not very close to my family. I
don't really know like what they're up to. M And
(06:01):
he believed me, and I just got the feeling that
it was better that way. He came from a very
conservative family. He looked like the Brady Bunch family that
I wanted so badly. Bright he came from his parents
(06:25):
were married, his parents who were successful. He had a
good upbringing, he was well mannered. The outsides looked really good.
I was attracted to him, to the whole family picture,
and we were getting pretty serious, dating all the time
(06:46):
and not dating anyone else. He'd invite me over to
have dinner with his family, and that made me feel
very good. But I knew that Adam hadn't a one
that I was transgender, and I was nervous to go
to his house for dinner because his dad was a doctor.
(07:09):
Would he noticed something about me and my features, my body.
I don't know something that would give it away. Adam said,
if this question ever comes up, deny, deny, deny. They
were right wing conservatives, so I knew that me being
transgender wasn't something that they were going to accept, but
(07:32):
I had never been told that I had to actively lie, deny, deny, deny,
just like Adam said. At the time, I said, I understood,
and I agreed to lie. No. No, what no? And
(07:57):
I remember I think I asked Adam on an occasion,
what would your parents think, and he said, oh, well,
they'd have a problem with it because my older brother
is gay and they just can't seem to accept that,
especially my father. So they were already dealing with that
(08:19):
prejudice within their own family. Adam was her baby, and
so Adam, I think, felt the need to protect that
and I had to play along. I had just celebrated
(08:45):
five years of sobriety, and he would tell me things like, well,
you know, maybe you don't need your Tolster program anymore.
You've been sober for five years, like you got it
from here, And I started drifting away for my program slowly,
because I want him to like me. I want him
(09:06):
to think that I'm strong, that I want what he wants.
Obama was in office and all he did was talk
about Obama. He've had cardboard cutouts of Obama and he
shoot pellets at him in his backyard. That I stopped
(09:31):
voicing any sort of opinions that I may have, political
or religious. I I'm ashamed of my family, so he
never meets anyone. Eventually, I had to tell him that
my mom was in prison, and right away, I'm like, yeah,
(09:53):
but I don't have a relationship with her. Don't worry
because I don't want him to think bless of me.
And he responds, yeah, that makes total sense. She sounds
like bad news. So I keep lying. I was taking
(10:16):
estrogen shots, right, so I'd get my estrogen shot and
then I'd go see Adam, and you know, I get
some side effects from estrogen shots, hot flashes, nausea. So
he said, oh, no, I understand, I understand your side effects.
I get side effects from the saucer into Adam had
(10:40):
secrets too, behind my back. He'd been taking steroids for bodybuilding. Well.
His major side effect was anger. He starts having these
like bouts of rage. I didn't want the situation to escalate,
so I just quiet and didn't say anything. Are you
(11:05):
sensing a pattern? I started carrying secrets from a very
young age. I think I started keeping secrets just because
(11:28):
I got the sense that my grandma didn't want these
things to be known. I remember being about six years old,
my grandma was starting a bath for me, and you know,
just being a curious little kid that I was, I
was always going through things and going through drawers, and
(11:48):
I remember looking behind the toilet and seeing something shiny
that just called my attention. And I picked it up
and it was a piece of tinfoil and I showed
it to my grandmother and I'm like, what is this?
And she freaked out. She's like, oh my god, this
is drugs. This is what heroine looks like, you know.
(12:10):
And she opened it and I saw the dark residue
on it, and she's like, you have to be on
the lookout for these kinds of things because you sat
the drugs that your mom takes. So you have to
tell me when you find something like this, tell me immediately,
but don't tell anyone else, not your aunt's not your mom, nobody.
(12:34):
This is a secret. And so that was like when
I started becoming my grandmother's little spy. I think there
was a lot of prejudice from my mom's sisters just
because she was a drug addict, and I think my
(12:58):
grandmother in a way felt she about hurt that. So
I had to keep those secrets. And then there was
this other lingering secret all through my life about who
I was. It actually didn't start out as much of
a secret. Mammy Leacha was proud of who I was,
(13:21):
the same grandmother who made me light to my mom,
who made me keep secrets about her drug use. She
had no shame at all about who I was. So
as a kid, as a toddler, I had long, curly
(13:42):
hair and it was very light. It was almost as
light as Mammy Lecha's hair. You know. She always had
these up dudes and a lot of AquaNet in her hair,
and always had makeup on, and she had these really
nice silk dresses that I remember her wearing, and she
was just always so well put together, and I remember
(14:07):
just admiring that. It was like I just wanted to
be elegant like her. She would let me play with dolls.
She would buy me dolls, and she let me really
just be myself. She didn't have a problem with that,
(14:28):
at least that's the feeling that I got. I remember
this was when like he Man and Sheira were thing,
and I wanted to play with she was so bad,
and so my grandmother bought me Sheira and she let
me play with whatever dolls I wanted. And my aunt
would come and she would tell my grandmother, like, don't
buy him those girl toys. He's a boy like, and
(14:50):
she would bring me boy toys like cars and play
guns and you know, little boy toys, and she'd throw
away my dolls. When my grandmother would get so mad
and she tell her, like, just let him be himself.
But I stopped living with my militia when I was seven.
(15:11):
I moved in with my dad's mom my nana, and
I got a different message. I wanted to learn how
to play the piano, learn how to play a guitar.
I think because I was a very feminine little boy,
there was always that fear that I was going to
(15:33):
be gay. I used to love to dance, I used
to love to singing. I used to be very creative
and artistic. And right away, like if you're suspected of
being very feminine or or gay, like it's like, okay,
let's like not let you dance, or let's not let
(15:53):
you play a guitar or be artistic, kind of trying
to steer me into their in direction, away from who
I actually was. Like I stopped dancing completely when I
was probably around twelve because my no, she would tell
(16:13):
me that I danced like a woman, and don't move
like that, that's too feminine. So I stopped dancing all together.
And now if I try dancing like, I can't do it.
I have zero rhythm, zero coordination. M I think he
(16:36):
was in my teenage years when they finally realized that, okay,
he's gay, because I started plucking my eyebrows and I
started just being into more feminine things. And like I said,
I've never been masculine, so I couldn't really passed as
like a masculine straight guy. That that just wasn't me.
(17:00):
I didn't even like calling myself a boy. It was
uncomfortable to call myself a boy. I couldn't really be
myself around my family. There was this unspoken don't ask,
ston't tell policy in the beginning of my transition, I
(17:21):
didn't really have a support system or you know, trans
friends that I could pick their brains. I didn't have that.
I couldn't did all on my own, and so just
everything that I researched on the internet and just you know,
I also I was in therapy at the time, so
(17:41):
I was having these deep conversations with my therapists, my
psychologist about this um. I was mentally prepared to be
cut off by the family because that's what I had
read so much online, That's what my therapist said might happen,
and so I was mentally prepared to just be cut off.
(18:13):
I think what made me most nervous was that, you know,
I grew up with this idea that appearance and image
and reputation is everything. And my grandmother always up how
like her image, and she carried herself a certain way,
and she looked a certain way. So I felt that
I didn't want to add on to like the shame
(18:35):
of like what we had already been through as a family.
So I carried that like just assuming that you know,
maybe she'd be ashamed or embarrassed. And I carried a
shame for so many years after that into my adult life,
into my professional life, like not being open about who
(18:57):
I was from the get go because I didn't want
to be discriminated against, and I didn't want to be
talked about. It was just such a heavy burden to have,
you know, it started eating at me. Adam accepted me
(19:34):
for himself right. He was proud to call me his
girlfriend and took me on trips and paraded me around town.
He was fine accepting me as what I passed as
a woman, as long as people around him, especially his family,
thought that I was assist woman. He was good. I'm
(19:56):
in this relationship with this person who says he loves me,
but have to hide everything that I am. I have
to hide that my mom is in prison. I have
to cover my tattoos. I can't voice my political beliefs.
I have to hide the fact that I'm transgender. So
(20:17):
it was almost like I was just there to adorn
him and make him look good. I mean, he told me, oh, my,
my father thinks you're so pretty. He thinks you have
this sexy latina with big boobs and he likes you.
Sounds a little weird, I know. I remember one night
(20:45):
we were driving to his parents house. We stopped at
Starbucks on the way and something was bothering me. Maybe
it was Adam. So at Starbucks, I got a latte
and drinking in the car ride. As soon as we
got to his parents house, I started itching, like really itching.
(21:11):
I broke out in hives. My throat started swelling. And
I'm not allergic to milk. I'm supposed to always carrying
up a pen because I'm allergic to shellfish, but there
was definitely no shell fish in my latte. And then
I have an EpiPen with me anyways, so I started
(21:32):
scratching my head. I became really itchy, like if I
have a thousand ants in my head, and I start
feeling my heart beat really really fast. My throat starts
closing a little bit. I started getting these hives around
my face. My I start swelling. I started looking deformed,
(21:56):
and right away, you know, He's like, let me get
you some ban and drills. So he gives me and Drew.
He calls his dad to come check on me, his dad,
the doctor. He tells me his dad's coming upstairs, and
I looked at him and like, Adam, what if he
like checks me, like he's gonna he's gonna feel me.
(22:23):
And I hear his footsteps on the stairs. So as
Adam's dad is examining my body. You right, he's putting
his hands around my neck to feel my lymph nodes.
I don't want him to feel my throat. I don't
want him to feel my Adam's apple. He's feeling my chest,
(22:48):
seeing if I'm breathing regularly, and I get so scared.
I started thinking, this man, he's a doctor, he's smart.
If he doesn't know, he's gonna definitely know. After this,
(23:08):
I'm more concerned about taking care of his image that
his family has of him than taking care of my
own health. Not long after that, Adam and I broke up.
(23:29):
It wasn't that day that caused the breakup, as far
as I know, his dad never found out, and I
never told Adam how painful that experience was. We broke
up after some other disagreement. But looking back, I think
this was a really important day. All I can say
(23:54):
is I was young and dumb, and I wanted to
fit in, and I wanted to be liked, and I
wanted to be part of the Brady Bench family. It's ridiculous.
I felt a need to protect him. Today, I feel like,
oh my god, how could you have done that, sacrifice
who you are just to save someone's reputation, all because
(24:19):
you wanted to be a part of it. I didn't
want to sacrifice myself. I hated hiding, and after Adam,
I didn't want to be forced into secrecy all over again.
So I made some changes. That's next time on Crumbs.
(24:51):
Crumbs is the production of I Heart Radios Michael Lua
podcast Network in association with Trojan Horse. It's produced by
Margaret Catcher and edited by Jazzmin Rometto and Alex Fumeto.
Original music by Daniel Peter Schmidt and engineering by Manuel
(25:11):
Executive produced by Gisevances and Conno Burn for I Heeart,
Alex Bumeto for Trojan Horse, Joshua Weinstein, Jazzmindrometo, Camilla and
and me Emio LEA special thanks to Monissa Hendrix, Fernand
Estrava and Sara Mota. Listen to Crumbs on the I
(25:33):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Emmy Olea
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