00:00 when I was a little girl. My previous name was Elizabeth, but I went by Liz.
00:03 I was always cognitively aware of being male, but when you're young, you don't really get it.
00:08 Like, you don't really get gender, obviously. Like, when I was six, I was six years old,
00:13 starting connecting the dots of being like, "That's me, but I don't look like that. Uh-oh."
00:17 Titanic came out, and I saw Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack, in it. I was just like,
00:23 "That's what I want to be. Everything about that is what I want to be."
00:26 I was brought up Catholic. Not a fun religion. Aesthetically pleasing, yes. Morally fun, no.
00:32 Every night before bed, I would pray that I would wake up and be Jack from Titanic.
00:38 And I did that for a very, very, very long time. I don't know if it was because he was blonde,
00:42 or I was just already into the cinematic swelling of emotion, the love story, and him,
00:49 and being very masculine. He was everything that I wanted to be and look like. And that's when the
00:56 wheels began to turn. And I was like, "I'm not that, but okay, it's time to do something about
01:01 it." And naturally, my six-year-old brain was like, "God will fix it. Let's ask God."
01:05 Fast forward all these years later, I was starting to take hormones to transition,
01:10 and I was trying to think of a name. No, no. A lot of times, people will talk about how they
01:14 pick the name for their kid, and they'll say that it's just a windswept feeling of, "That's it."
01:20 So one day, I had just went to see a childhood friend I had initially watched Titanic with when
01:24 I was a kid, and I was walking home from her house, and I just had this like, "Phew." And I was
01:29 like, "Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo." To me, it would be a gift to six-year-old me. It would be like,
01:36 "Here's your prayer being answered. You get to be him. We're going to get to be him now."
01:43 I'm officially 10 years on testosterone as of November 25th, and then my birthday is November
01:48 30th. So there's a lot going on. And I just wanted to say that that doesn't mean that I've reached
01:53 my full potential. I don't want you guys to be thinking that where you're at isn't where you're
01:57 supposed to be, because where you're at right now is perfect. Life is nuts, dude. You don't reach a
02:02 certain point, and then it's all done. I didn't have a linear path. A lot of people that are queer
02:06 don't. While other people were doing the school to the internship to the job to the additional job
02:11 to the promotion to the next job, my life has been crazy. I lived overseas for a lot of it. I lived
02:17 in Arkansas. I was working as a cowboy. I was traveling all the time. I was running away from
02:21 myself. I was drinking too much, and it taught me so much. My pain is the journey that brought me to
02:26 heaven, but does it look good on paper? No. Does it look good to people that don't understand what
02:32 it's like to have a non-traditional existence? No. My full-time job then was just being alive
02:41 and trying to navigate being the right gender and trying to acclimate to living with someone's
02:46 trauma and having really bad habits because I didn't understand myself emotionally or spiritually.
02:51 I was just in a lot of pain.
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