Well, the first person I told, I told them during the summer holiday before the start of Year 11 so the yeah, so before GCSEs and everything. So, then at school nobody used my name or pronouns ever because almost nobody knew and then the only time that anybody would know was in the after-school LGBT group with like the friend that I first told and the trans people and my other friends from that group. But even then, I didn’t use my name and pronouns with them because it was still in the school building and nobody did the group in a classroom and so nobody was teaching in it or anything so after school, occasionally the teacher would come in and get something and go out again. The risk of accidentally outing myself to like other members of staff or to the staff member who was like supervising the group to make sure everything was okay and everything. Not wanting to be out to them beforehand was an issue, especially because when I previously came out before realising I was trans that information managed to, I mentioned it to, I think it was the head of year or something and then a couple of days later my sociology teacher was congratulating me on coming out and I was like, ‘Okay, I never told you.’ Don’t know how that information managed to make that jump that quickly. Yeah, so that experience and just generally negative experiences with like the pastoral people at school, hugely put me off wanting to be out to any member of staff, so, because of that I didn’t use my name or pronouns until before the run up to GCSEs when I eventually got fed up and everyone just used my name and pronouns in the group and then wasn’t out to anyone apart from one member of staff who worked with like a team that wasn’t to do with anything that I was involved in that still sort of wasn’t that much of a risk of it spreading. So, for most of that year it was just, yeah, dead name and wrong pronouns.

I was just hoping generally for some sort of support with dealing with any sort of issues I was having with my gender and then also being given some sort of route to hormones, presumably because of the gap because of the gap between when I was referred and when I actually got there, I was almost 17 when I got there so they effectively told me as soon as I got there. We are not going to prescribe you anything. Because you’re too old and we’ll need to have stuff sorted out by adult services, which yeah. So, going in and just thinking well, I would like hormones from whoever will give me hormones. So, I think this might be a potential route to that because I’d had friends who had been through the process with GIDS before, but because that was quite a while ago and because how the process works is incredibly opaque and people who have been through it don’t know how it works. They don’t tell you how it works. The website doesnt tell you how it works. None of it is very clear at all. I didn’t really know what to expect, but by that point, because of my experiences with the counsellor, the GP, the pastoral support team at my school and the counsellor at CAMHS, my expectations for talking to somebody else were very, very, very low.

I thought that I would have some understanding at least of how to get hormone treatment. Whether that was going to be through GIDS or through adult services, I wasn’t completely sure because there just wasn’t. I felt I might have more of an understanding which I guess I did by them saying, no, you’re not getting anything from us. But, even then, not really. And then I thought seeing a psychologist for appointments all these times, I might get some kind of support in some way. But I didn’t, it was basically just a series of appointments where I was interrogated by this guy a bunch of times and it was just uncomfortable and didn’t feel beneficial to me whatsoever.

The only thing I can think of besides being trans which we’ve obviously talked about quite a bit would be the psychologist effectively saying he thinks I’m autistic, I think it’s probably that sort of thing is pretty much the only other sort of factor I can think of. He isn’t the first sort of professional to suggest that that might be the case. I’m fairly sure it probably is the case, but haven’t been formerly diagnosed or anything and working out how to get that to happen is another thing I don’t understand. Yeah it’s sort of like especially with, with GIDS who I said the main experience I’ve had with healthcare besides teeth and eyes. it’s sort of just the sort of like a lack of understanding of just me in general and the sort of idea that I can’t be trusted to make decisions about my own body or to understand myself. And I feel like the fact that it hasn’t been diagnosed and that I don’t actually 100% know for sure if I’m autistic or not sort of doesn’t help this, but with seeing my GP about mental health stuff, a lot of it feels like it would be a pretty vital bit of context to understand especially with like social anxiety and stuff feels like it would be very essential thing to understand because like whether I am autistic or not. My experiences of social interactions seem to be pretty different to most other peoples. I feel like that’s something that I don’t know how to adequately explain without saying that I’m autistic and I can’t say that to a GP because I haven’t been diagnosed and it sort of feels like that’s a barrier to properly understanding my situation.

And then with makeup it’s, the main issue with that is that I have tried a couple of times to put makeup on. I’ve never gone out wearing any makeup or anything. But since I’ve never really done it before, I am terrible at it and since it’s something that basically just need to keep doing over and over again until you get good at it. Since I don’t feel any pressing need to wear makeup and I don’t especially like how having it on my face feels because yeah, got difficulties with sensory stuff as it is and then also having to try and put stuff on like try to do anything with my hands, like my hands sort of shake a bit all the time generally and then trying to do something precise with them makes that worse than that doesn’t work very well if you are trying to carefully put something on your face.

There is the whole emphasis on childhood and everything that you have to try and fit into which I imagine probably didn’t help with the whole thing at GIDS since neither me or my mum ever really bothered trying to play into it because it just wasn’t accurate and it was trying to conform to a particular narrative was mostly just me not mentioning whatsoever that I’m not a binary trans person because it just complicated it in a way that I didn’t want it to because ooh do you know? Do you know if you definitely want these hormones if you’re not entirely a woman. Ooh are you completely sure that you’re trans all that sort of stuff. So he sort of just wanted to try it since that was stuff that I was already going to have from having to through the process not mentioning that aspect of my identity seemed like a thing that would just make it easier. And then there was another massive pressure to dress a certain way and to use make-up in a certain way and to all this sort of stuff. But just doesn’t fit with like my reality, really.