“Expose yourself to your deepest fear;
after that, fear has no power,
and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes.
You are free.” ~ Jim Morrison

I was born on July 29th 1992, and named Lisa. I first realised that I was “in the wrong body” when I was about 5 or 6, or maybe earlier, I don't know. I just remember being at the toilet door when my cousin was going for a wee and he was doing it standing up, whereas I had to, for obvious reasons, sit down. On seeing this I wondered why I didn't have a little dangly thing to pee out of. I don't remember asking anybody this question but I do remember coming to the conclusion that maybe I will get one eventually. I was always a tomboy, preferring to play with action figures, toy cars, football and Lego, rather than dolls which uncles and aunties insisted on giving me as birthday and Christmas presents.

Once I reached 12 years old, the years of my grandma and my mum successfully getting me into dresses and skirts finally went out the window when I figured out I could say no, and it was jeans and trousers from then on. When puberty hit it was horrible. All of this stuff started happening that is completely natural for a girl of 12 or 13 to go through, but for me it wasn't right. As far as I was concerned I was a boy so therefore I was supposed to have a penis and a flat chest, not breasts and that red blob thing that always insisted on turning up once a month.

I finally came out about being Transgender when I was 15 to my counsellor after watching the previous weeks Sharon Osborne Show, when she had a female to male transgender person (F2M) as her final guest, who was talking about how he went through the process of first deciding he was a lesbian before finally coming out as Transgender. This was only after he had tried to overdose on prescription pills and painkillers. Luckily his mum found him. I was sitting there watching and listening, and just thinking that was me because although I hadn't tried to kill myself, I was identifying with everything else that he said. For the next week I was nervous because this was huge to leave myself open like this to ridicule or to be dismissed as just being silly, the effects of which would have been crushing for the one person who I trusted above all others to be able to talk about anything with, but thankfully she didn't do that, she was brilliant, and she helped me by going on the internet with me and finding out about the whole process. That night I sat at home and chose my new name which was quite fun. I was originally going to choose the name my mum would have given me if I had been born a boy, which was Scott, but I decided I didn't like that. After some more thought I chose Zackeriah because when I was a kid we had a dog called Zack, and he was like my big brother. He used to protect me if I was getting told off. He would stand in front of me facing my mum and bark at her while she was shouting at me.

Thats pretty much my story.

Photo @ me