In 2021 I stood on the start line of the Olympic Trials 1500 final and said to myself “maybe it’s just easier for everyone if I don’t make this Olympic Team”. Three months earlier I had come out as trans nonbinary and started using they/them pronouns. I felt exhausted from explaining what nonbinary meant to the track and field community over and over again. Headlines would read “trans runner Nikki Hiltz..” and automatically I was assumed either someone assigned male at birth or a trans man who was taking testosterone. I was called a cheater, a mediocre man, a fraud. I felt so misunderstood and like everyone in the sport was tripping over their words when talking to me or about me. I wondered if the NBC staff hated calling the races I was in because it was a burden for them to remember my pronouns. I all of a sudden felt like I didn’t belong in this sport anymore. It was all too much and I could feel my dream of becoming an Olympian slip away from me on that starting line. The gun wen...