"So when did you know?" Part1

Usually one of the first things people say when you tell them you're trans is "so when did you know?" or "how did you know?"

For me it wasn't one of those "oh I've always known" kinda feelings.

This is going to be a two part post, this one will cover childhood up to aged 18, and the following post will cover university and actually figuring out I was trans.

Right, so..
The vast majority of my childhood was spent focusing on gymnastics so I just saw myself as a gymnast rather than a boy or a girl. I use to train with the boys a lot though, and my coach always use to say "it's a shame we can't cut your hair, stick you in a boy's leotard and enter you in their competitions". Gender just wan't really something I thought much about. When not in a leotard or school uniform I mostly wore neutral things like cargo trousers and hoodies. I watched wrestling with my step brothers and we made a ring in the garden out of mattresses and ladders and other things, and it always use to bother me when my Dad would tell them to be careful with me, especially as at the time I was just as strong them, if not stronger, plus gym skills, but that's the not point of this story. I did go through a few random girly phases where I wore skirts, did my hair, made a half-assed attempt at doing make up. This was mainly around the later secondary school years, my friends were quite girly (in comparison to me anyway) so I guess I was mainly trying to blend in and try and be pretty and "normal" like them. I was also dating guys all through school, not that that has much to do with anything as sexuality and gender aren't related but just thought I'd chuck it in there. I remember when I was thirteen my Dad and Step Mum got married and we had to go bridesmaid dress shopping and I was miserable. When I eventually came out to her she said "oh this explains why it was so hard to get you into a dress for the wedding".

But moving forward, as I got older I got more and more masculine with my presentation. I realised during my first year of college (age 16) that I was attracted to girls, so I don't know if that ended up playing any part in it, just through seeing masculine lesbians and liking what they were wearing etc.
I never knew that trans men existed in all honesty, probably due to the area I live in being quite sheltered when it comes to diversity. Cornwall is almost like a different country in that sense, it's probably like around at least 90% White British people, and a low percentage of LGBTQ people.
College was an okay time for me, not great. I was very introverted, especially for someone doing a sports coaching course! The rest of my class were pretty boisterous, when they actually turned up that is. I did well at college mostly because I was one of the only people that ever turned up for all the classes, and I got on really well with my tutor. My tutor was a lesbian, so considering I had just started figuring out my sexuality and that I was attracted to girls I felt it somewhat comforting having her around. I passed my diploma with Distinction, Distinction, Merit, which was what I needed to get into my university of choice to do Sport Science. This was the end of my doing well in academia unfortunately!

I was adamant that I was going to be a gymnastics coach or personal trainer or something along those lines. Which with my lack of confidence and assertiveness I don't know what I was thinking, kidding myself really. But off I went. I was pretty excited, but terrified as I'd barely been out of Cornwall, especially on my own and 7 hours away from home but thankfully I'd joined a few groups on Facebook so had spoken to a few people who were gonna be on my course or in a halls block near me.
For me, uni was where everything changed and I figured out who I really am. If I didn't go, which I really didn't want to for a long time, who knows where I'd be right now.

Would I have even transitioned?  I probably wouldn't have.

So when did you know? Part 2/2 University

As I write this I am sat on the train up to my final ever psychotherapist appointment at the GIC, I should be being signed off for discharge from the clinic today, so it's great looking back and thinking about how far I've come in the last 6 years. 

Right, so back to the whole “how and when did you know” thing...

One day at uni, my best mate and I felt we'd like to meet more LGBT people and decided to take ourselves over to a different campus and attend the Uni's LGBT society tea party event. I identified as a lesbian at this time, and so did she. So along we went, quietly crept in, not knowing anyone other than each other. There ended up being a pub quiz type thing planned, so we joined with a couple of other people to create a team that was wonderfully named “Kate's Bush”. I can't remember how well we did but it was fun. There were quite a few people there; the Uni we were at was in the most well-known LGBT place in the country. Everyone was lovely, and we were very glad we made ourselves go, and planned to attend more events in the future. There was one person there that I remembered very well who introduced themselves when we went in, a trans guy. I'd never met a trans person before (that I knew of), and in all honesty didn't even know that trans men existed. I sort of knew of trans women, but not with any real knowledge on the subject, regarding hormones or surgery etc. So I was quite intrigued, and I don't know what happened, or where it came from, but suddenly something clicked in my mind, and I felt different. I felt like I could relate to this guy. It's hard to explain because, well, I can't really understand it myself. I didn't really realise that this was something that would register with me, I had never thought much about my gender before. I had been getting increasingly masculine with my appearance in the previous few years, cut my hair short and bought men's clothes, but I figured I was just a “butch lesbian”. I wasn't exactly happy with my body, but who really is? I was always pretty muscular due to gymnastics so I liked that, and was always glad that I was small chested but hadn't thought much further on the subject. I can't recall whether I spoke to him much on this occasion, I think probably not due to confidence and the fact that my head was now swimming in a sea of confusion. When I went back to my room later than day I did a lot of Googling, and blog finding (I was already on Tumblr so was easy on there) and I found some Youtube channels of trans guys talking about their transition, including hormones and surgery and I stared at all of these for hours and hours. I learnt the word “Dysphoria”. 

I ended up very much overwhelmed and just feeling generally confused and emotional.
How was I suddenly so unhappy? Had I just been suppressing these feelings for years and now after randomly meeting this guy it's all come to the surface? I don't know, and I'll probably never really understand it all. But one thing I did know, was that I needed to speak to this guy again, I had to know how he had gone about transitioning, and if I could do it. I messaged him, and we met for coffee. It was brilliant. He explained hormones, binders, surgery and I was completely certain that this was what I needed to do. He gave me some details about support groups online, and in person. There was actually a group for young trans* people in the area that he helped to run so I was keen to meet more people and find out more.

I went along to this group soon after, and met some lovely people. I was horrendously nervous, and just the initial saying hello was terrifying. Sitting in a circle and saying your name and pronouns, you wouldn't think this would be so hard. But so many things start running through my head, do I give my current name and pronouns, do I know a male name I want to use, do I say male or female pronouns!? I ended up saying my current name but following that with a quiet uncertain statement of I have no idea about pronouns or even my name right now. They were all great and said that's fine and normal, and that they often have people come back to later groups using different names and pronouns. I felt better. The group was scary for me, I was an introverted person at the best of times, so I didn't engage in the activities much but I was definitely glad I went. I'm also now still friends with people I met there, and they're all doing brilliantly as well which is fantastic. 

However, away from the groups and the internet, university was still continuing around me and I was falling terribly behind. My dysphoria escalated quickly, and within a few months it got to the point where I was feeling completely consumed by it. I didn't want to go to lectures, I couldn't even bring myself to leave my house or room because I just wouldn't be able to handle people seeing me as I was.  Even going to cheerleading training was becoming a struggle, and that was my favourite part of uni life. I know you may think that's a weird thing to join and enjoy but I joined because the gymnastics team was minimal and this cheer team didn't actually do any yelling or pom pom crap, just stunts, gymnastics and a bit of dance. Plus the girls were actually some of the most lovely and supportive people I'd ever met, so turns out cheerleaders aren't always as stereotypical as you may first expect and it was somewhere I could forget about everything and just focus on routines.

Trigger warning: self harm & suicidal feelings
I managed to just about scrape a pass for my first year of uni, by submitting the bare minimum and having to retake a couple of exams but I did it. I got a first in Gymnastics but everything was low. I was extremely unhappy at this point, and obviously the falling grades didn't help at all either. I started self harming, cutting my chest, and the tops of my arms where no one could see. The pain served as sort of a distraction I guess. It wasn't very often at first, but then turned into almost daily. I didn't know what else to do with myself, I just hated the body I was in and wanted to attack it. I did also think about ways in which I could kill myself. The easiest way, whether I could do it without telling anyone, whether if I did it would I come back as someone else.  I did finally tell someone though when I went home for a visit. My girlfriend at the time, I think we were actually watching the L Word and there was the storyline of Max transitioning, and I just managed to blurt out “I feel like that”. I told her everything about how I was feeling, and that I'd been harming myself and she reacted amazingly. You never know how people are going to react to something like that, especially someone so close to you. But she was great about it and ended buying me a binder. We broke up not long after but that was for a different reason including long distance issues and she was still supportive.
end of trigger warning

I went back to uni and the binder arrived, it felt amazing. I looked in the mirror and saw a flat chest, it looked right, it looked like me. I wore it all the time, I couldn't leave the house without it on. Thankfully it was also winter so lots of layering helps with the chest situation. I felt a bit more comfortable with myself now that I had my binder, but I still didn't feel good, and obviously it made no difference to my feelings about anything else like my voice or the rest of my body. I still didn't want to go to lectures because of the possibility of having to answer questions in front of people or do group work which was pretty much always, especially in the lab sessions. So I stayed pretty much just at home then, left my room for food and occasionally to see my housemates. I was falling increasingly behind with my work, and since I'd just started second year at this point I actually had work assigned that would make a big difference to my final grade. I just couldn't concentrate on any of it though. The thought of transitioning just completely filled me, it felt like there was nothing else in the world more important. I got to the stage of feeling like I had no future, that I'd rather die than stay there and continue to live my life as “female”. So I made a decision. I felt like I couldn't transition and remain at uni, for a few reasons. The main one being that I was terrified of the thought of having to come out to everyone in my classes, along with lecturers. Also the fact that I was so far behind already that I knew I wouldn't be able to catch up so I'd just make myself more miserable. I also wouldn't have been able to continue on with the cheer squad because it was an all female team, so without that I basically had nothing else at uni that I wanted to stay for.

I started telling close friends about how I was feeling, along with some of the girls from cheer, and everyone was absolutely amazing. No one had an unsupportive word to say about it, and I was so relieved. However, I still hadn't said anything to my mum. I was so scared of just telling her that I was leaving uni, without even bringing the whole gender thing  into the situation! She's very academically minded my mum, she studied for a long time and even did a PHD in something that I could barley make sense of the title of. So the prospect of telling her that I, her only biological child was dropping out of uni wasn't a particularly inviting one. I told the uni that I was leaving, they tried to convince me not to obviously, but I just said for personal reasons I just couldn't continue with my course. They said I'd get a certificate for passing my first year sent to me, which is something I guess, had it actually turned up, which it never did but oh well, thankfully I haven't needed it. So I told my mum over the phone that I was coming home, I packed up what I could and got the train home around the usual Christmas holiday time at the beginning of December. I told her that I was dropping out because the second year just wasn't what I expected with the new modules etc and that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. She wasn't best pleased, and tried talking me out of it and to just stick it out but she didn't know that I'd already confirmed with the uni that I was leaving. I felt guilty, but I needed to do this, there was no other option for me.

So that was it, I went home. Next terrifying thing to do was get the courage to come out to my family and friends back there. Then starting the process to transition, and try to be happy and comfortable with myself. 

Here is a comparison of near the beginning of uni vs this week, roughly 6 years apart.

10th October 2016 : 4 years on testosterone..

10th October 2012 was the day of my first testosterone injection, also the day that my life started to change, to get better.
I remember being in the waiting room of my doctors surgery holding that box with the vial of Nebido in my hands, I had literally just sat down and was about to take the vial out of box to warm it up in my hands because that's what I'd been advised to do by the other guys in a support group, it makes the injection less painful as it's easier to inject when it's warm 'cause it's pretty thick liquid. But for the first time ever I was called in early, so I rushed straight into the nurse's room, gave her the vial, lay on the table with the top of my butt out and a couple of minutes later it was all done. It was quite surreal , and all a bit of a blur, as I'd built the whole thing up in my head so much over the previous year that I was expecting to feel something, but it was all so quick that when I came out of the surgery it didn't feel like anything has even happened. I just felt very matter of fact about the whole situation, like, oh okay so that's done, now what? I was expecting to feel different, or elated, but I just felt relaxed and normal, walked out like nothing had happened. As the days went on I just felt more calm, and slowly but surely, less anxious. And so began puberty number two.
Within the first month I was noticing changes, my throat was scratchy, skin was oily, more/thicker leg hair, increased libido and appetite. Second month saw a progression from one lonely dark chin hair to three, oh the excitement! haha and my facial hair and body was getting darker/thicker in general. Voice also started to do something that month,
The following months saw more hair, everywhere, voice breaking, the start of fat redistribution, noticeable changes to the shape of my face. At 1 year on testosterone I looked pretty different already, since I hadn't really got much facial hair yet it was just my face shape and my general confidence boost that was noticeable. I also had chest surgery at 7 months on t. After 1 year all there really is to say that 4 years on now, I'm still just getting hairier! Happy with the facial hair, the beginnings of back and shoulder hair is less favorable, but oh well, it all comes with the testosterone puberty package! My voice had mostly settled by 2 years on. Fat redistribution was finally doing its thing with my hips, so I started taking a more masculine shape which was an amazing feeling putting tops on and them not clinging to my love handles area. It became easier to put on muscle when working out as well which helped this a lot.
Aside from the hair, the biggest change that has been noticeable over the last 4 years is my confidence. I am the most comfortable with myself that I've ever been in my life. 5 years ago everything seemed so far away, my mental health wasn't great, I never thought I'd get to where I am now. I'm proud of myself for pushing through, I am eternally grateful for the healthcare system we have in the UK, I am eternally thankful for my family and friends that have stayed with me through all this, and for the support I have discovered within the trans community and the new friends I've made through seeking support. It's amazing how an injection in the butt cheek every 11 weeks can change your life so much. When I was younger and tried to imagine what my future would look like, I always struggled to see something. But now I am happy with who I see in the mirror, I have a great family, an awesome circle of friends around me, an amazing girlfriend, somewhere to live with a good friend, a job I enjoy and hopes for the future. If I could have shown 19 year old me where I would be in 5 years, I never would have believed it, but here we are. It really does get better guys, I know it's hard to hang in there through the waiting times and healing from surgeries, not even bringing in the crappy comments and possible confrontation from closeminded idiots along the way. But it's worth it all the end, honestly. You'll get there :)
Here is how my face has changed over the last 5 years!

New Blog - Intro/first post

Documenting a journey in the hope of making others realise that it's okay not to be a heterosexual cisgender person.

I've had a Tumblr blog for the past few years but wanted to try and progress onto something more substantial that could reach a wider audience. 

In 2016 you wouldn't think it would be necessary to explain to people what being transgender means, and that it's not something that will completely ruin your chance of having a long happy life, but it seems that there's still a bit of work to do on understanding and acceptance. Hopefully I can shed some light on that and show that you can in fact function as a human-being, have friends, relationships, a family, a job and serve as a decent member of society as a trans person.

I will never make a big impact in comparison to someone like the amazing Laverne Cox but hopefully I'll be able to make a difference for a few people.

At the time of writing this I am now pretty much completely post medical transition, so I am going to be looking back over my experiences from the past 5 years or so and onwards from now. From realising my gender identity and beginning to take action in order to align my body with my mind, and then what happened during the multiple surgeries I have undergone to do this, along with the psychological effects. I might share photos, some of which may be fairly graphic, so I will try to ensure there are warnings before these.

I never thought that I'd want to share my transition with anyone, especially strangers on the internet, but now I feel like if it has the potential to make the smallest positive impact on someone's life then it's worth the possible backlash and judgement from the close minded people that are still floating around out there. It hasn't been an easy few years, but where I am now in my life and the people I have around me, I wouldn't change for anything. So if there is any sort of negative reaction to this, I know I will be well supported. So here we go, let's see how it turns out.

Notes:

• This is only my personal experience, so I am in no way saying that this will be an accurate representation of every trans* person's transition.
• There will occasionally also be posts unrelated to being trans if there is something specific going on that I want to talk about.
• The timeline of posts may be a bit all over the place as there will be a mixture of current and historic experiences but I will try and keep things in an understandable order.

Written on 02/10/2016