I believe my desire to transition came from wanting to control the way other people saw me and become a different person to make me feel better about myself rather than trying to work on the body image issues I already had. 1/6

I hated myself and thought the solution was changing everything about me. If I became a different person the outside, maybe I would change my mindset towards myself. It worked for awhile. It was like I got to put on a facade and all pretenses were dropped. 2/6

I really did find myself during this time. 3 years on testosterone as a teenager growing into an adult. Looking and sounding different made me more confident to say whatever I wanted. I didn’t feel held back. I had built a shell on the outside to protect myself. A man’s body. 3/6

But why does a teenage girl have to transition to male to solve her body image issues? To feel free from the expectations that are placed on women. To feel like her brain is more respected than her face or body. She’s taken seriously. She’s seen as a human being. 4/6

Eventually the facade crumbled when I was confident enough as an adult to realize that the way other people see me shouldn’t affect my life so drastically. As an adult, I see this clearly now. As a teenager, I didn’t see it at all. Adults cant understand the mindset of a kid. 5/6

We are letting kids make this decision. Kids feel that they’ve seen it all and figured it out, but they cant predict when the teenage insecurity will go away and the future will suddenly look different, when things they cared about once won’t matter at all. Adults- help them. 6/6