Prologue

As a young child you don't have a concept of gender, and you have never even heard the word "identity". It doesn't really occur to you that the world is divided into male and female – boys and girls; men and women – and that there are different sets of expectations for each. You just exist. When you're old enough to talk, you call yourself a girl because it's what you're supposed to do. It's what the world tells you that you are.

As the years pass, you begin to learn what it means to be a girl. For one thing, there's the hair that your parents like you to keep long, preferably in pigtails or braids. You don't see the point, however – long hair just gets in the way as far as you're concerned. Then there are the clothes. Long frilly dresses and skirts that get stuck everywhere; tights that make your legs itch; and shoes that are impossible to run in.

Most days you're allowed to just wear pants, because your mother wants you to be a modern young woman. You don't know what that means, but you know that, even when your wear pants, you have to look a certain way, because you still look different from the boys you like to play with. But at least you can run and play freely.

On the days that you are forced into a dress, you complain loudly that it's uncomfortable and you feel silly – like you're wearing a costume – but after a while you stop complaining, because you can see that the dresses make your mother happy, and you want her to be proud of you. Still, you can't help but look at your brother in silent jealousy sometimes.

You're six years old when you enter first grade, and your best friend since preschool stops talking to you because his new friends think girls are lame. That's the first time it truly hits you that you're a girl. That not only do you have to dress and keep your hair like one, but people are also going to treat you like a girl. It doesn't matter that you feel uncomfortable and out of place in a group of girls, and that the boys are much more fun to hang out with. You're a girl, and that isn't going to change.

So shortly before your seventh birthday you come to a decision, and from then on you try harder to fit in the way you're supposed to. To be the girl the world expects you to be. It feels kind of like you've taken up an extra class at school; one where you're constantly trying to catch up, always a step behind everyone else and perpetually confused about this week's homework. You tell yourself that it's probably this way for everyone, but – like you – they try not to show it or talk about it. After a while you even get used to it. The constant struggle becomes just the way things are, how they're always going to be, and whenever that nagging voice in the back of your mind becomes a little too insistent, you drown it out with words of praise and love from the people around you.

You're eleven and a few months away from completing your fifth grade when a new student transfers into your class. The first time you see her, you're convinced that she is a boy, and you're confused at first when the teacher introduces her as Sara. The girl fascinates you, and when you approach her to welcome her and admit your mistake, she laughs and says that she is definitely a girl; she just doesn't like most girl things. It's called being a tomboy. Sara and you take to each other quickly and you stay best friends throughout middle school. Sara is completely at peace with herself and it's through her that you start to learn that it's okay to like what you like and be who you are; that not every girl has to be a princess. You start picking out your clothes through different criteria, and for your twelfth birthday your only wish is that you be allowed to cut your hair short. Your parents, though a little reluctant, grant your wish. You're a little confused as to why people start assuming that you and Sara are an item, but you don't really care because you have never felt more happy and comfortable in your own skin.

It doesn't last.

Logically, you have always known that puberty is going to happen to you. You are aware that at a certain age boys and girls start to change into men and women. You've covered the basics in biology and you know plenty of grown women, so it isn't that you're surprised when it happens. What does surprise you is how you react when you notice the changes.

It's panic. It hits you like a ton of bricks one morning about a month after your twelfth birthday. Panic because suddenly, as you stand naked in front of the mirror, you can see how much has already happened, and you know it will keep happening. All at once this is real and it feels so, so wrong. You hate what your body is turning into and you feel inexplicably betrayed by it. All the other girls seem to be welcoming the changes. Even Sara is excited about the prospect of buying her first bra, but the thought terrifies you, and you don't understand why. You don't understand why you can't just be like everyone else.

You try to tell your mother about it one morning over breakfast, but she tells you it's normal to be a little scared about leaving your childhood and to just hang in there, it will get better. This doesn't help you at all, and you have a hard time believing that you're really meant to feel like this. Claustrophobic and trapped in your own body. Like each day is a nightmare that you keep hoping you'll wake up from, but you never ever do. Like the person you see reflected in the mirror every day isn't even you. Before you can articulate any of this, however, your mother is out the door, off to one of her important meetings, and you're alone in the kitchen again.

You decide that the internet is your friend, but as you sit in front of your computer, the brightly colored Google letters far too cheery, you have no idea what to even search for. Or at least that is what you tell yourself, when the truth is that you're scared. Scared that there isn't an answer to your problem. Scared that there is. So every night you sit there staring at the computer screen as the blinking cursor seems to mock your indecision, and every night you go to bed without having typed a single word.

By rights the thing that finally pushes you over the edge should be some big dramatic moment, but it isn't. It's simply more of the same, but week by week it gets more and more difficult just to exist, and the months go by until finally you've had enough. You sit down at the computer, open Google and without planning or hesitating you type in the words confused about my gender and hit enter.

You don't sleep that night. Instead you spend hour after hour browsing through dozens of websites and watching countless videos until your eyes hurt and your mind feels like it's about to explode from information overload. It's nearly four in the morning when you finally go to bed, and even then you lie awake for the longest time, your whole body thrumming with nervous excitement. It's real. What you're feeling is real. It's then that you say the words out loud to yourself for the first time.

I'm a boy. I may not look like one, but I am. I'm transgender.

Somehow, even though knowing this, and knowing that there are others like you out there, should be – and is in some ways – comforting, you've never felt more alone.

You fall asleep crying.