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”.
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.
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