How a Cis, Hetero Couple Became My Queer Chosen Family

“Hey. Can I come over?” I asked in a cracked voice. My mouth dry, trying to remember how to breathe.

“Yes. See you soon.”

I walked down North Avenue through what remained of the sunset and into the warm embrace of their home. They stayed up with me in their kitchen with dark and stormys and an extra slice of their favorite dessert, listening as I retold everything that had happened—how a person I wanted no longer wanted me, and how much that hurt. They held me while I cried and assured me I deserved to be loved, that I was loved. We laid on their living room floor as I showed them the pages of an art book I was starting—a story in pictures about my life as an intersex, queer, trans person. They knew this story well, and told it back to me with empathy and compassion. Then they drove me home.

At this point, I’d been close with John and Corrie Thompson for over ten years. John was the first friend I made in college. I spotted a distinctive pair of cowboy boots and an open seat on a couch in the lounge and decided to say hello. A few months later, we became roommates. He met Corrie during our fourth year. I catered their all-pie wedding and welcomed their daughter Mabel home from the hospital.

But on that night when I had my heart broken, as I tried to receive the Thompsons’ validation with grace, staring up into the skylight from their living room floor, the way I felt about my friends, the way I told them “I love you” as I said goodbye, was evolving. I don’t know if I saw it fully then, but I think I was feeling it. I loved my friends—this cis, hetero couple and their young daughter—even more profoundly than I loved the queer woman that had just dumped me. And they loved me, too.

John had driven me to the fertility clinic twice in the weeks before for moral support and pancake breakfasts. It is a special kind of friend that will wait for you while a doctor asks you to ejaculate into a cup, especially twice in one week—and only a dear one that will find ways to make you smile and discuss the quality of diner-grade biscuits and gravy when you are crying in a restaurant booth having failed a fertility test again.

Upon receiving the final test results, I felt profoundly alone. The way I had come into the world was closed to me. I had always wanted a child. I grew up in a family of six and it felt like a family—a biological family—was just a necessary part of a full life. I wanted to exist for the sake of someone else, to see myself in them, and to share that with another person, see them reflected too. Knowing that that existence was closed to me made me feel inhuman; that the person I thought I was did not exist; that I should not exist.

Then came a giant plate of fried plantain chips with my three favorite people. And for a moment, my life felt like it could be OK for another day.

“We considered adopting. Not that you have to.” They opened up to me, discussing the struggles of unplanned parenthood, the difficult conversations around considering a second child and going through a second pregnancy, and what adoption might look like.

“It just feels like the person who I’m supposed to have this conversation with is missing,” I couldn't help but say.

“Yeah, but until then, you can have it with us,” Corrie assured me, nudging forward a bowl of black bean soup for dipping.

I was born without the ability to produce testosterone. And while I was raised with love, some things just went unsaid. At 19, I was diagnosed with Kallmann syndrome and sent to college with a vial of testosterone, a bag of intramuscular needles, and a bioharzardous waste bin. I don’t remember much from that time—pain has a way of rewriting your past. But I know I stopped my treatment just a few months after starting it and hid from it for ten years. For that decade, the treatment and my choice to stop it became this heavy, unspoken thing I carried. My family never talked about it. My siblings and relatives never really knew. Eventually, it felt like I didn’t even deserve to talk about it it out loud. Until I told the Thompsons, then a therapist, then my friends and coworkers. And I tried again.

With the Thompsons by my side, a world that felt like something was always missing suddenly felt less solitary. When I was depressed and didn’t feel safe to be alone, I could call and sleep on their couch. When I started hormone treatments again and stabbed my leg three times trying to get the needle deep enough, I could text them through the pain and it felt normal. They were the first people I told I was queer and trans; the first I asked to use they/them pronouns for me. And they met me with love and grace and oatmeal cookies. They supported me when I later chose to stop the hormone treatments, and through a long trial and error period of queer dating that, to be honest, is still ongoing.

Looking back, I can see that as my identity as a queer person was changing, my idea of family was changing, too. In my mind, family had always meant the one I was born into and the biological family I couldn’t have. But gradually, I recognized that being queer, for me, was about seeing that differently. I began searching for the beginnings of a family with queer friends and partners, but in that vulnerable and lonely space, I found myself calling on a relationship I already had—the Thompsons.

I couldn't always perceive it, but in each step in our relationship, I felt an increasing trust and safety that the world wasn’t always ready to offer me. I was able to speak out loud who I was, and it was met with the words “I love you.” For me, more than anything a dating app might offer, this was queer. To be able to choose the people I love and define what that word means, even when the way I was taught to feel, to exist, says otherwise.

“I don’t know. I guess so. They will likely be pretty small.”

Corrie had texted me that they were in the ER that afternoon, and I found myself dropping everything to rush to be with them. Mabel and I played a repetitive game from school, singing the days of the week from each of the ER waiting room’s many chairs, while Corrie checked on John and called their families in Texas, who were eager for updates.

After everything they’ve done for me in the past year, it feels nice to be there for the Thompsons. But more than that, it feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. In the quiet of their home, as Corrie wishes John goodnight at the hospital, I put Mabel to sleep and I find, for once, that I exist for the sake of someone. I see it for just a moment, but the thought brings me peace. I get to choose who I love and how I express that love—and tonight that involves strawberry toothpaste, and Disney Princess pajamas, and three people that I consider my family.

“Thank you for taking care of me.” Mabel leans on my shoulder as I restart the book one more time.

In seven months, the Thompsons will move to Texas, and our relationship will change again. I’ll hug them goodbye in tears and hold them in an empty kitchen where we grew so much. But for once, I won’t feel so alone in it or like I am losing something. There’s a certain strength in things that you chose to be a part of. I know that the family we’re building will, despite the distance, always be unconditionally close.

This essay was originally published under a different headline.