Mental Health Awareness Week - My experience

TW: mention of self harm and suicidal thoughts.

So this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. Personally my mental health has always been something that I struggle to talk about, like alot of people. I don’t do words very well, especially out loud which tends to be the way people want you to work things out. My mental health has been very up and down over the last 6 years, I may try to write a more in depth blog post later this week but keeping it brief-ish for now.

At 19 when I finally realised I was trans, I started in a place where I was strongly considering taking my own life because living the rest of it as the person I was just wasn’t something I could imagine doing, there was no future I could picture for that person. I felt very guilty about this because I knew that I had people around who cared about me, but that still didn’t feel like enough. I ended up becoming very reclusive, I didn’t go to lectures anymore and then rarely left my room because I just didn’t want people to see me and view me as female and as someone I didn’t feel was me. I spent all my time in my room, thinking about how much I hated my body and what I could do about it, I wondered if I took my life whether I would be able to come back as someone else. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t switch my mind off. I struggled with self harm. I was just lost. I wrote a lot of my feelings down in a journal, I think I ended up throwing this away though during various house moves, which is a shame because I’d quite like to look back at it now to see how far I’ve come.

Thankfully after reaching out to someone that I met at the uni's LGBTQ Society, he signposted me to a local Trans Support Group called Allsorts. I pushed myself to go along, and I'm so glad I did. Though I remember at the first session just being filled with panic. It started off with introductions, saying your name and pronouns. You wouldn't think something like that would be so difficult, but I wasn't yet at a stage of being completely certain on a name, and I hadn't started asking people to use male pronouns for me yet. So I muttered my previous name and female pronouns, adding that I was currently unsure and that it will likely change (which it did at the next session). I managed to stay for the whole session, and met some amazing people, some of whom I'm still in contact with today.

But fast-forwarding on a bit, I decided to leave university, I started failing the year and I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than my dysphoria and I knew that until I addressed this there was no point in continuing my studies as things would just continue getting worse. I felt really guilty for dropping out of uni, especially without talking to my family about it. But I just wasn't ready to talk to any of them about what was going on. I spoke to the uni about leaving but didn't tell them exactly why. I sort of blurred the truth a bit and said it was due to family issues at home that I had to take care of.


Once I returned home and finally worked up the courage to start telling my family about wanting to
transition I had mixed reactions. I won't go into how I told them and who said what because I've spoken about that in detail in previous posts, but things could have been a lot worse. I was very fortunate in comparison to many. Some of my family were incredibly supportive. I was referred to the Gender Identity Clinic in Exeter called The Laurels and thankfully back in 2012 the waiting lists were so much shorter, my wait for first Psychotherapist appointment was about 6 weeks. To give you an idea on how much referrals have increased now, the current wait is about 12-14  months for that appointment!  I really feel for those being referred now, I don’t know how I’d cope with a wait that long.

The day I legally changed my name May 2012 vs April 2017

But this is getting too long for what I said was going to be a brief post!
So I’ll just say, I made it. I started HRT (Testosterone), I had chest surgery and lower surgery, which was really rough but completely worth it and my body is pretty much as close as it could be to a cis male now. Obviously there’s still things I don’t like, the fact I had to have all this surgery at all, while also constantly having to prove myself to health professionals that I needed it. The fact that it took such a chunk of time out of my life. The stupid and hateful comments telling me I’m an abomination and should kill myself. I still go through periods of depression and struggle with anxiety, but I’m getting better at dealing with it. I’m trying to get better with talking about it openly to the people I’m close to. I’ll get there. And you’ll get there to.

I thought this image was relevant, even though it’s a few years old now. Most scars are now covered up with tattoos, but they’re still part of me, and they use to only remind me of who I was, which sucked, but now they are also a positive reminder of how far I’ve come.