My transgender tale is as old as time, opening with the devastation brought by puberty upon turning 11, as my mother gleefully delivered the horrifying news that I was finally “becoming a woman.” I started going to bed every night with crippling anxiety that I was slowly turning into something I couldn’t fathom myself as, and one day I would wake up as someone I couldn’t recognize. The disconnect between my body and self-image begot disbelief, then disappointment, which then transformed into