"I was born and raised in the Poconos; when I was 14, I was living in Pennsylvania, I didn’t really know what I was. I didn’t really know what was wrong with me — I couldn’t really understand it. At one point, I very much defined myself as a gay man. I started doing drag when I was in my senior year of high school; I was part of a drag house. I had a bunch of gay friends, and I came out."My drag mother had a transgender friend, Christine, who lived in the area. I didn’t even know what transgender was back then. I remember taking off my attire from the evening, and I was covering my chest, and she goes, 'Why are you covering your chest?' And I said, 'Um, I don’t know. This is what I always do.' She asked, 'Do you know you're trans? You’re covering your chest because you feel like you’re exposed, like you have something to cover, when in reality there’s nothing really there. You’re still a boy underneath all that.' I kind of took it with a grain of salt, and didn’t really think twice about it."A year later, I started transitioning. My freshman year of college, I realized how uncomfortable it was to be around a bunch of men, and that I didn’t relate to men at all. So, I took all of my male clothes and threw them in the dumpster. I borrowed clothes from my friends; then I went to a Salvation Army and bought a ton of awkward clothing that I should probably never wear in public ever again, and I started living [as a woman] full-time."It was difficult to transition when I was living in Pennsylvania; I had to travel to Philadelphia to get hormones from a clinic. It's not an easy process. Before college, I was basically living full-time as a woman. I wanted to push that [further], by starting HRT [Hormone Replacement Therapy]. So, I moved to New York, I fell in love, got a job, and started my hormone and gender therapies. I’ve been on HRT for over four-and-a-half years now. But I’ve been 'full-time' for about 11 years.""Living on a men’s floor freshman year, I almost felt exposed. I had never lived with a bunch of men before, I had never played a sport, and I was the artsy kid in school. Going to college can put you in a situation where you have to kind of sort out your gender role. No one had ever pointed it out to me that I didn’t fit characteristics of what a man is. I wasn’t necessarily interested in anything masculine. I wasn’t even having sex at the time, to be honest. I was interested in men still, as a 'gay man,' but I wasn’t comfortable with myself enough to put my body on the line for that. I’ve never been comfortable with having a penis."