We need to move past the idea that to transition, you have to have had a childhood of uninterrupted misery. I had the persistent feeling that something was off that I lacked the vocabulary to describe, but there were lots of happy times when that was back-of-mind.

I was a scrawny, outdoorsy kid and my dysphoria didn’t get overwhelming until my mid twenties, when it became obvious that I was aging into a man and I finally developed the vocabulary to understand why I was so prone to depressive episodes.

A lot of trans people had genuinely awful childhoods but I also think a lot of us know that we need to highlight the bad times to seek permission from disapproving cis people to live our lives and I’m tired of it.