This article has been written by Patrick - thanks for sharing your story of the mind with us. If you would like to follow Patrick on Instagram you can visit @neotokyo3. As always, the experiences conveyed in this article are that of the writer and are not a substitute for professional advice. If you need help, follow the link in the menu bar to find helplines in your country. 

Oftentimes you don’t wholeheartedly acknowledge how far you’ve come until you reflect in earnest. Looking back, the person you were may not have believed you’d reach this point, yet now you are here; you are alive and thriving, for the most part.

A scared little boy at fourteen who thought he was all grown-up. Seventeen, on the verge of responsibility. Finding solace in mistakes; learning from mistakes. Twenty now, realising nobody ever truly stops growing. Getting older brings you new perspectives, and I was nothing but a stubborn stereotype of believing things never get better.

In the process of growing older, I had to eventually regard being transgender as something that didn’t just sit outside my field of vision. Realising this was a poison arrow through my chest. Uncertainty and fear began to taint every aspect of my life, like a disease slowly spreading through my system. If rock bottom taught me anything, it’s that you have more capability than you’ve fed yourself to believe.

It’s strange being in public; I don’t think this feeling will ever dissipate entirely. It’s the anxieties everybody has: body language, way of talking, walking, appearing - amplified by knowing the coarse hair growing on your face does not match your body in the eyes of the norm’s majority.

My body in contrast to the way I identify will perhaps never truly align with how I wish it were, and accepting this is something initially difficult that eases over time. It’s the journey of finding there is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and the act of accepting and re-accepting one’s self is something that becomes a daily occurrence… an hourly occurrence.

There is no endgame. There is no final-boss-battle of coming to love yourself; it’s an undulating road that ends when your heartbeat does.

I was born as a woman. I was raised as a woman. I built resilience by readjusting myself in a world where being a transgender person means taking risks against your safety, relationships, and self… perhaps your life. The thousands of people who are underrepresented, and misrepresented even more so… oftentimes I wonder how I can make a difference. I think if I can influence even one person positively, that’s something.

It’s human instinct to want to be part of a collective; a grouping of likeminded individuals; included and respected by others. It’s not uncommon to get lost amongst this instinct by falling into the mould of other’s expectations. Identity is never rigid, always malleable; inadvertently we may find our identities confined within small spaces without room to grow. Something like this can harm us more than we know. Restriction of self, purposeful or not, is a sure-fire way to exasperate poor mental health.

I remember the exact point in my life when I had the opportunity to take full responsibility for myself, and I took it. I needed a drastic change. I desired anything but the stagnancy that had weaved its way into my life and settled, a rotting carcass always in the corner of the room. Reaching a point of desperation enabled me to seize all issues of dependency and inadequacy and throttle them for control. It worked.

Abstractions aside, I am transitioned. I am the person I willed myself to be though for a long while I had no will. It was something that couldn’t be forced though I pressured myself to adapt and overcome even after it began to backfire. I came to find balance.

Things are better.