HOW TRANSITIONING IS GOOD.

When I was 12, and in my first year of high school, my mother decided that I should take up tennis even though I wasn’t particularly keen. My brother was the sporty member of the family, having played soccer, cricket and gone swimming and every Saturday afternoon, after playing cricket, he wanted to play something else.

My mother decided that I should go to a holiday tennis clinic, which was okay, but then she made a big mistake when she suggested a second, as a classmate’s father was the coach’s fellow coach and he told a bully at school that I was no good at it. The bully took his word and used it to taunt me. This particular bully also chose to believe a pack of lies from another bully after I was hit by a car, and that bully didn’t even see it! And, I remember one day, the two of the bullies were throwing pieces of an eraser at me during class and when I told the supervising teacher, she told the bullies to cuddle me to apologise. It humiliated me more than the bullies. The second bully, also, the following year, as he was considerably shorter than me, walked up behind me and pinched my nipple through my shirt.

Having begun using a testosterone blocker and estrogen gel, I have noticed buds forming underneath my nipples and they have grown in size. My nipples have become more tender and there’s a different sensation if I touch them. This is helping remove some of the trauma of what the bully did (he had no right to pinch my nipple through my shirt, as my body is nobody else’s but mine and I have the right to decide who touches it and under what circumstances). Yes, I am still the same person, but as I am transitioning into the person I wanted to be, I feel happier.

I am not an overly competitive person, so I know it’s a marathon, but I don’t want to be compared to a woman or compared to a man. I am not like my mother, I am more like my grandmothers and one of my aunties, and I feel a strong connection that way.