I grew up in the South. I’m sure you can imagine how that experience went for a young, autistic, trans man. My only escape was reading and my only form of expression was writing. Despite the love and acceptance I got from my mom, I struggled to form attachments to anyone other than fictional characters. By high school, I felt like my entire personality was a facade, an amalgamation of the people around me and the traits deemed “acceptable” by society. I couldn’t openly express myself and that repression started getting me into trouble.
My mind wandered and I found myself struggling to focus in class, too worried about what might happen if I ever dropped the mask. I stopped reading and writing. My grades plummeted and many of my teachers said I’d be lucky to graduate high school. They were almost right. I’d just barely finished the first three years of high school, passing classes by the skin of my teeth. Spring semester of my senior year, I was already flunking two classes. That was when COVID hit. All of the senior teachers bumped everyone’s grades up to passing and promised they wouldn’t go back down. They told us if we wanted better grades, we could attend Zoom classes during lockdown to improve them. I, however, was so burnt out by that point that the thought of doing so gave me panic attacks. Graduation rolled around and I was in the bottom of my class. I still graduated though!
After high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Everyone told me to “go to college” and “get a degree” and “do something meaningful with my life.” But I’d barely made it through high school and I couldn’t stand the thought of putting myself through that again. I worked a handful of dead-end jobs, got some tattoos, skated through life doing almost nothing. In 2021, I decided to apply to Cosmetology School. It was fun. It gave me something productive to fill my endless days. That experience made me fall in love with learning again.
I moved out of Oklahoma and up to Virginia with my parents in 2024 and started community college. I fell in love with writing again. I started writing more poetry, getting published in The Bloomin’ Onion and Wingless Dreamer. I graduated from community college in a year and transferred to a university, from which I will graduate at the end of 2026. My biggest dream in life is to write something that would make high school me feel seen and safe.
Greyson Finch (he/him) is a poet from Oklahoma. Throughout his life, he’s struggled with his mental health and childhood trauma while also growing up queer in the South. He uses that to write pieces that speak to the soul. Pieces that people like him can read to know they’re not alone. He’s been published in The Bloomin’ Onion and Wingless Dreamer. He can be found on twitter at @Greyson_Finch77 and Instagram at @greysonfinchwrites
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