I never chose to be transgender. People don’t believe that, not really, not in their bones. They imagine it’s a phase or a decision or a lifestyle, something picked up like a hobby or a haircut. But the truth is far simpler and far less glamorous. Some of my first words at five years old were, “I want to be a girl when I grow up.” Five. You don’t choose anything at five except maybe which crayon to melt on a radiator.  And here’s the part that always seems to surprise people: I never wanted to be transgender either. Not once. If someone had offered me the choice between being trans and losing a leg, I’d have asked which leg they wanted. That’s how deep the self‑hatred ran. Not hatred of the world — hatred of myself.

I played “man” very well. I wore the frame convincingly, lived the role successfully, and people liked that version of me. Sometimes I even liked that version of me. But underneath, the truth sat there like a stone in a shoe — small enough to ignore for a while, painful enough to ruin every long walk. And as I got older — over fifty now — I simply lost the will to keep fighting it. Not in a dramatic way, more in the way you eventually stop arguing with gravity. You just let it be. Let you be.

For most of my life I’ve been ashamed of being transgender, ashamed enough that I’d announce it before anyone even asked, like a confession or a warning label. I thought if I said it first, it would hurt less when they rejected me. And maybe twenty years ago that made sense. The world felt sharper then. The government certainly isn’t standing behind us now. The headlines are loud, the laws are colder, and when you’re already ashamed, every news story feels like proof that you were right to hate yourself.

But here’s the twist I didn’t see coming. As I slowly, awkwardly, reluctantly started stepping out of my box — wig slightly crooked, dress slightly wrong, courage slightly borrowed — people mostly just said, “Oh cool,” or “Alright,” or “Fine by me,” or the classic, “My grandchild / neighbour / friend is a transgender too.” And I’d stand there thinking, Wait… what? That’s it? No pitchfork? No moral panic? No collapse of civilisation? It knocks you sideways, realising the world isn’t half as bothered as you are yourself.

Because here’s the truth I avoided for decades: as long as I hated myself, I assumed everyone else hated me too. I projected my shame onto the whole population. I mistook my fear for their opinion. I read disgust into neutral faces, danger into silence, rejection into every interaction. And then one day, a neighbour asked me about compost. Not my gender. Not my wig. Not my hormones. Compost. He wanted to know how to improve his soil. I stood there thinking, What on earth is the exact issue you have with yourself, that you thought this man cared more about your HRT than his tomatoes? That was the moment something cracked open.

A private psychiatrist (female to male transgender psychiatrist) once told me, “Your situation is one of the toughest. You’re not a binary transgender person. You need hormones, your body will change, but learning to live with yourself — that’s the hard part.” He wasn’t wrong. I don’t live “woman” very well. I don’t live “man” very well anymore either. I live somewhere in between, and I don’t live that very well either. But that’s my work. My learning curve. My life. The NHS, back then, pushed sexual reassignment surgery as the “right path.” Maybe they were being cruel to be kind. Maybe they were doing their best with the limited understanding they had. I said no — give me the pills, let’s see how we get on. And here I am, decades later, still getting on.

So let me say this plainly, for anyone who needs to hear it — whether you’re trans, or questioning, or cis but carrying your own private shame: you cannot hate yourself into becoming someone else. You cannot shame yourself into peace. You cannot outrun the truth of who you are. And you certainly cannot choose your way out of being transgender. The only choice you ever get is whether you spend your life fighting yourself, or whether you finally — quietly, imperfectly — let yourself be. And once you stop hating yourself, you might be surprised to discover the world was never hating you in the first place.