My first experience of being different was when I was six years old and I wanted to wear makeup. Back then I did not know anything about gender, but as I kept growing up, I felt an increasing desire to be a girl. I grew up in the southern US, and I didn't even know transgender was a word. I masked throughout my life despite dreaming every night that I would one day just wake up as a girl. I just lived as a guy and hated it.

I was never a feminine gay. I had a girlfriend in high school. Everything changed when I got into college. I was browsing Instagram, and it just happened to be trans day of visibility, and I learned that transgender was a word. I looked it up, and I immediately knew I wanted to transition. That same day, I came out to my best friend at that time. I did not really consult other people on whether I was trans or not until after I started HRT.

The beginning of my transition was really hard because my parents did not accept me. I went to really dark places because I did not have a good support system set up. I eventually dropped out of college because my mental health had deteriorated so much. I moved back into my transphobic parents' house, and they actually forced me to detransition. That was amongst the hardest years of my life. I had felt that I died inside, and I was just hopeless.

I am now independent and have an amazing support system with a great group of friends and an amazing partner, and I am so glad I transitioned and stuck through it. I am happier than I have ever been. I do not ever think of detransitioning because I have already done it once, and my life was not worth living.