Evan Urquhart

And, my reaction to learning about trans people was personal embarrassment combined with a need to distance myself from them.

I never found trans people funny myself, but I knew that other people found them funny, and this was painful to me.

I blamed trans people for that pain. I viscerally wanted them to stop hurting me by being the object of ridicule.

In addition to angry, I also felt intensely jealous. "Why do trans people get to transition when I secretly want to transition but can't?"

I held all that inside because I was embarrassed, and I didn't want to be laughed at, and I was ashamed.

The most freeing moment of my life was when I finally had the thought that no one was stopping me from transitioning but me.

I literally stopped dead on the street with the thought "I could just say I was trans and transition. No one could stop me or say I wasn't."

It was many months after that that I decided to go forward, but giving myself permission to just be trans if I was trans was a breakthrough.