My Detrans Story - Detrans Awareness Day

Very quickly, I started to feel depressed. That feeling of being 'different' got worse, I started feeling even worse about the body I'd never truly been comfortable with.

When I was very young, my mother liked to dress me up in pretty little dresses, bows and frills. I eventually hit an age where I decided I didn't like these 'girly' things anymore. I rejected dresses, I rejected pink, and - as an undiagnosed autistic - I insisted on wearing only soft, non-fussy clothing. I wouldn't even wear jeans! My mother didn't like the fact that she couldn't dress me up anymore. She told me many times throughout my young life - you should have been born a boy. She called me a tomboy, which felt like a pejorative coming from her. I knew that she wanted a girly daughter, and my un-feminine nature was disappointing to her.

Throughout childhood and my teenage years, I struggled to make friends with girls. There was just something about me that was fundamentally different to other girls. I didn't fit in, holding conversation was difficult, and I could tell that they always saw me was odd, different. I later learned that this is a very typical experience for autistic girls, but since I wasn't diagnosed with autism until I was 28, I didn't know what was 'wrong' with me. I just felt like I was broken.

I always wished I could join the boys. I wished I could join the boys PE classes. I wished I could wear the boys PE kit. I wished I could just be friends with the boys. Eventually, I fell into a crowd of nerdy boys at school when I was around 13. For the first time, I felt truly comfortable in a group of friends. From age 13 until sixth form at age 17, I found myself happy and comfortable in friendship groups of exclusively nerdy boys.

After I failed my first year of A-Levels in college, I moved to a new college, and had to make all new friends. For the first time in years, I found myself with female friends. Everything felt difficult again suddenly. I felt out of place, conversation didn't flow easily, and that feeling of being 'different' and 'broken' came back with a vengeance.

I identified as bi. I ended up in online support groups for bi women, but was surprised to see that a lot of the women in these groups identified as male. I was shocked to see that I related to these women a lot. They struggled with friendships with girls the same way I did. They rejected anything girly like I did. They never felt quite right, the same way I did. The narrative in these groups back in 2009 was that if you think you're tr&ns, you probably are. I figured that these people were genuine tr&ns people, therefore they knew what they were talking about. I quickly started questioning whether I was tr&ns, and fell into obsessive research. The more I researched, the more convinced I became.

Very quickly, I started to feel depressed. That feeling of being 'different' got worse, I started feeling even worse about the body I'd never truly been comfortable with. I got my GP to refer me to a gender clinic. I started thinking about ending my life for the first time. I started to harm myself for the first time ever.

I told some close friends, I came out to my mother. My mother proceeded to out me to my entire family. One of my boyfriend's friends proceeded to out me to all of her friends. I wasn't 'ready' to come out, but it was taken out of my hands. I cut my hair short, and I started to dress even more masculine. I 'chose' the name Aaron for myself. I say chose - really, it felt like it chose me. The more I obsessively researched tr&ns, the more my mental health plummeted.

I had intrusive thoughts about ending my life. I begged the GP for help with my all-encompassing depression. She told me that my depression was 'situational' due to being tr&ns, and refused to prescribe me any medication to help with my depression. She told me that transitioning would effectively be the cure for my depression. I was left alone, on a gender clinic waiting list, with absolutely no support for my depression and constant, severe urges to end my life.

Things got bad at home. My mother decided I couldn't possibly be tr&ns because of what she had read online. When she wasn't ignoring me, she was yelling at me. This all came to a head when she got home drunk one evening. I had hung a metal sign on my door with 'Aaron' on it. She saw red, ripped it down, threw it across my room and screamed at me. I screamed back. I showed her that I had been harming myself and told her that she had pushed me to it. She and my stepdad laughed in my face and called me an attention seeker. This argument ended in me feeling so unsafe that I called the police.

A couple of days later, my mother confronted me. She told me that I was f---ed up and not welcome under her roof until I'd had psychiatric help. She told me I had 24 hours to find somewhere else to live. I called my dad and he picked me up the following morning.

Being away from the constant stress of living with my mother caused an immediate improvement in my mental health. I no longer wanted to take my life. I had the mental space to consider my transition with a peaceful mind. My dad was a tech dinosaur who didn't have an internet connection, so I was cut off from my tr&ns echo chambers and I was no longer able to obsessively research transition. The obsession started to fade.

Within just over a month of moving out of my mother's house, I no longer felt dysphoric enough to continue to pursue transition. I'd be lying if I said I've never felt dysphoria since then, but I've gotten to the point where I now feel comfortable living in the body that I have.

I am now comfortable with saying that I am a woman. An adult human female. I wish that 17-year-old me had known that there is no wrong way to be a girl - that being a 'girl' is simply being born female, and that what you choose to do with it from there is entirely up to you.