My name is Kaeleigh, I am
a teenager and I am male to female.
As a young child, I was gender variant - I wore girl clothes while at home, expressed to my mom that I was a girl not a boy, and lots of other signs that don't really need to get into. My parents were confused because although they wanted to support me, they didn't know very much about transgender people other than what they saw on TV. They read some books, and concluded that if I did turn out to be transgender, there wasn't anything they could do about it until I was 18 - so they waited.
Though I have always known inside that I am a girl, it wasn't until I was 10 years old that I realized being transgender was a real thing. I saw an episode of my favorite TV show at the time - Ugly Betty - that featured a beautiful transgender woman who had faked her own death and disappeared for two years in order to have sex reassignment surgery (and many other treatments of course). From that moment I knew I was just like her.
I remember thinking for so long that I needed this surgery, but it must cost a million dollars and I probably have to be 40 years old to have it! For a long time I was scared to even search the word transgender on Google... I didn't want my parents to know this was how I felt. I was unaware that they had suspected it all along...
When I was 14 I saw another TV show, Law and Order Special Victims Unit, which featured a 13 year old male to female transgender girl in one episode. She was seeking hormone blockers, a controversial treatment for kids who express the desire to transition. That was a bittersweet moment for me. I knew it was really possible, but at the same time I was still scared that my parents would not accept me.
I came out to them a little while after, and although they were daunted by transition they fully accepted me and told me that they were not surprised at all and that all of my behaviors and expressions from my childhood now made complete sense.
I don't like to talk about the early part of my transition, but since coming out to my parents I have taken the very same puberty blockers talked about in that SVU episode - Lupron - and been on hormones for more than a year. I have my surgery date with Dr. McGinn in less than a year. I have made so many friends through the transgender kids community, and it is wonderful when I get to be with them so we can just be ourselves without worrying what others think of us.
I am also so happy to have parents and a little sister who love and accept me unconditionally.
Here is a picture of me:
