No one else can write the story of your life, except you.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. And this little girl believed that she could do anything. That she could be anything. Perhaps it was an astronaut, or a veterinarian, or a singer. To this little girl, the world was her playground.

Now once upon a time, this little girl grew into a young woman and doubts and insecurities began to cloud her mind. Her self-image and worth shattered and she fell into a stark depression that she feared she would never crawl out of.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, this young woman left the U.S. and traveled to her hearts content. She learned how to laugh, love, and find joy all over again. And when she returned, she held something new; something she didn’t have before.

This young woman returned home with her true self.

Someone who is unapologetically weird. Someone who is not afraid to break outside her comfort zone. Someone who finds utter joy dancing in the street and falling in love over and over again with every person she meets.

She became someone who understands her issues and makes conscious decisions to move past them.

She became a heck of a lot more selfish; and honestly loves every minute of it.

She became someone who is finally growing into herself; and is trying her absolute hardest to embrace every bit of life’s joy.

This young woman is me. And I am her.

I’ve been told that I tend to take myself way too seriously. But hey, who else is going to take me seriously if I don’t? Life for me is a constant battle of deciding whether I feel more myself with or without the various antidepressants I take. In the grand scheme of things, I realize my problems do not hold much weight. There are plenty of wonderful individuals out there who have been dealt a far worse hand than I.

But you see, I already know I am blessed. For all that I have dealt with, there is always someone who has it worse. But the thing is, my problems matter too. Everything that we feel in this life makes us all the more human. Never apologize for what you feel. Accept it, learn to understand it, and find ways to work through it and better yourself.

When I first started going to therapy, I told my therapist that I felt like I shouldn’t feel what I was feeling; that my problems didn’t really matter. She stopped me there and asked me ‘why’. She told me to get rid of the word ‘should’ because it is an evil term that implicates how society wants you to dictate your life. There is no rhyme or reason to the word ‘should’.

She told me to take care of myself and that it was okay to put myself first and be selfish every now and again. What I was and am going through is not inadequate, or silly, or unimportant. Yes, it is different than what those less fortunate are going through. But that’s just it. It’s different, but it still matters in my life. I know that now. And it’s with this knowledge that I work on being kind and gentle with myself every day. And I strongly believe that everyone else should do the same.

We really are our own harshest critic.

When I left for England, it wasn’t just Georgia I was leaving behind. It was my past self.

I left behind the girl who was too afraid to speak out about her struggles with anorexia and depression. I left behind the girl who fell into relationships that held too much toxicity. The one who let the demands of others dictate her life without thinking about what it was she actually desired-what she felt she needed to continue on in this world.

I left behind the girl who was the mold of only what her parents wanted.

It was then that I finally started to feel at home in my own body. I finally understood that I’m not fully ready to love someone else because I haven’t had enough time to really love myself; but I’m getting there.

Yet, growth will always walk hand-in-hand with resistance. Change is not universally pleasant. Not everyone is going to like the person I become, but I’ve come to realize that it’s okay. At the end of the day, the only person that is with you until the end is yourself. When we die, we die alone. But I don’t see that as a morbid thought. Instead, I see it as more of an incentive to continuously work on loving the life I have created.

These days, I’m all about the idea of “fresh starts”. As corny as it sounds, there’s something so refreshing abut a new school, a new job, or even just a new haircut. So with yet another new start, as I begin my time at here UNC Chapel Hill, I’ve decided to go by Elle. It’s a play on words with my initials and a semblance of my middle name. Call me Lindsey if that is how you know me; but as of now, I have never felt more myself.

Tattoos, chopped hair, new-named rebellion and all.

No this is not a phase. I don’t believe in such a term. The word ‘phase’ comes with the implication that you will grow out of whomever you are now. But to me, I see it more as growing into the person you were always meant to be. Your life is a novel filled with many different chapters. Just because you read on into a different chapter, doesn’t make the prior pages any less a part of your story.

No, I am definitely not the same. And honestly, I thank the heavens for that every day. Because I am finally living for me. Finally seeking my own happiness. And with that, my good days finally begin to outnumber the dark.

“Find the love you seek, by first finding the love within yourself. Learn to rest in that place within you. That is your true home.” – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Twenty-three years ago my parents were told “it’s a girl.” The doctor marked ‘F’ under gender on my birth certificate, slapped a pink bow on my head and I was off to face the world full of society’s expectations of gender. For the next twenty-two years I lived in a body that never felt quite right. And because of that I was a very quiet and awkward kid who had horrible social anxiety.

My mind has blacked out a lot of my early childhood. The good memories are still there though. Running around the neighborhood with the boys playing Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh. Climbing trees and building forts in the backyard.

I let go of who society wanted me to be and became who I wanted to be.

I had no awareness of gender back then. I never thought of myself as a girl but I didn’t know how to communicate that I felt like a boy. The years went by, my childhood ignorance faded and reality hit me smack in the face when I started middle school and puberty.

I started attending private school in the sixth grade and of course there were uniforms. The girls wore skirts and the boys wore pants. There wasn’t anything more in this world that I wanted than to wear those pants. So I did.

For a week I wore those pants with a smile on my face and confidence in my step. But the more I wore those pants the more I felt different, and I didn’t want to feel any more different than I already did. So the pants went in the closet for the rest of my school days and my identity went with them. From that day forward I told myself I was going to fit in. But that was easier said than done.

Nothing feminine came naturally to me. I was bullied into shaving my legs, I wore my younger sister’s old clothes, I felt awkward in dresses, and I got along better with the boys. For a while I felt invisible. I didn’t really feel like I belonged anywhere and I felt very alone. Seventh grade rolled around and I joined the cross country team. I was a scrawny kid but I found some success in the sport early on. By eight grade I was running with the high schoolers. Running gave me a confidence I had never experienced before. It changed my life. I found myself scoring on the Varsity team during freshman year. When senior year came I was the number one runner and qualified for the track state meet in both the mile and the two mile.

While running was a high point for me, I still had a lot of lows.

Throughout high school I didn’t have many real friends. No one I’d want to actually hang out with outside of school. I never had a feeling of completeness as something always felt missing. I was so terrified of being different by the time I got to college I threw myself into trying to fit in. It was a disaster. College was the first time I had ever tried alcohol. It numbed the pain and my lowest point hit when I woke up in the emergency room with alcohol poisoning on Halloween night.

That was a turning point. I began to let a part of me out that had been deeply hidden for years. I went to online chat rooms and posed as a college boy who went by the name of Jake. I stayed up late at night texting through a video chat with my long hair tucked up under a hat. I talked to a lot of girls and them seeing me as male just felt right. But this also scared the hell out of me.

This didn’t feel normal, it actually felt weird and I never wanted anyone to know my secret. So even though I kept my Jake profile up, I made it a point to present as much as a girl as I could. Almost to the point of overcompensating.

This went on until my last year of college where reality really hit me hard. It was the reality that I couldn’t live in this closet forever. I couldn’t inhabit a body that I could barely look at in the mirror. I took baby steps and came out as a lesbian in October of 2014.

It felt incredibly wrong and like I had gone deeper into the closet.

Slowly I got rid of all my female clothing and began to incorporate male clothing into my wardrobe. I shaved one side of my head and less than a month later just cut it all off. I still remember that day clearly.

I was sitting in the spinning chair at the hairdressers with a black cape fastened tightly around my neck. The hairdresser made a few snips and I watched the long locks that had caused me so much pain, just fall to the floor silently. I looked in the mirror and saw myself for the first time. Twenty-two years is a long time to see a stranger every time I looked in the mirror. But as silly as it sounds, that haircut changed my life.

Because I was still competing on the women’s track team I chose to wait until after the last meet of the season to disclose my secret. The few months before I came out were difficult. I was presenting as a lesbian but attracted to straight females. It was an internal struggle that ultimately led to multiple heartbreaks. But it made me strong and confident because I knew who I was no matter what anyone else told me.

The last track meet was in mid-May and my parents were attending. So I made plans to tell them that weekend. I had already come out to one of my roommates, a few friends, and my sister. All had gone well up to that point, but I was still terrified this would not go so smoothly. It was Mother’s Day so I had bought my Mom a gift and brought it to my parents’ hotel room.

In the bottom of the gift bag I had shoved two letters that I had written detailing my coming out. My Mom opened the gift and then I showed her the letters at the bottom of the bag. They each took a letter and sat on the bed and began reading. I was on the other bed sitting beside my sister having a huge panic attack inside.

It took them a few minutes to read the letters and once they were through there were tears. To this day I still don’t think they entirely knew what my intentions were with transitioning but it didn’t matter because they told me they would support me no matter what.

The confidence I gained from having their acceptance was incredible. Now I won’t say it was a smooth process but I believe I was very lucky to have had such an open and loving support system.

Losing a daughter was not easy for my Mom.

She took her time to grieve, which I let her do. It was a very emotional time for her. I began seeing a gender therapist and she wrote my letter for testosterone after a month of weekly visits. I scheduled an appointment with the endocrinologist the next day and received my first shot of testosterone on June 10, 2015. My family made an agreement to switch pronouns and begin calling me by my preferred name after my first shot.

So I came home and was greeted by my Dad who shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Jeffrey”. For my Dad it just seemed to click with him that he had a son. My sister said she never felt like she had a sister anyways. And my Mom, well she had a hard time letting go of Jennifer and welcoming Jeffrey. But everyone deals with this differently and that is completely okay.

After starting testosterone I still couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror unless I had my chest tightly bound in a binder. This was turning into a bigger and bigger problem as I was finding it hard to move forward in life while my chest was always in the front of my mind. After weeks and weeks of my parents asking every day what I planned to do with my life I sat them down for a talk in early October.

I could feel the sweat dripping down my back as I nervously explained the problem. I told them top surgery was what I needed to do before I could move forward in any meaningful way. They agreed and I set a date for top surgery with Dr. Charles Garramone. I went under the knife on November 5, 2015 for my first sexual reassignment surgery to have the two biggest problems in my life removed. A literal weight was lifted from my chest.

I woke up from surgery and the first words that came out my mouth were, “Are they gone?”

This experience has taught me a lot about both myself as well as about others. Before I came out as transgender I thought I would be ridiculed and shunned. I thought I was alone, but in reality there are hundreds of thousands of people just like me. Some of them don’t have the support of their loved ones or even the courage to come out and be themselves.

I graduated with a film degree wanting nothing more than to move out to Los Angles and work in the big film industry there. But lately I’ve been rethinking that and trying to figure out how I can use my love of film and make a difference in this community. After being exposed to all the struggles and hopelessness some people are feeling I feel a sense of duty, a calling if you will, to help my brothers and sisters.

With that being said, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But the future only comes one day at a time. Patience is the key and I can say this confidently from experience. Always remember you are enough. And last but perhaps most importantly, there is absolutely no shame in living an authentic life.