A lot of kids cry on their first day at school; I don't think I did, although I certainly felt like it. At this school boys went in the left door, girls went in the right door and I was sent in the wrong door! I couldn't understand it. All the other girls were going in that door, but I was being made to go in with the boys! And the other girls were all wearing skirts, but I was in shorts like the boys! It was then that I knew somebody somewhere had made a terrible mistake! And so began my nightmare life pretending to be a boy. I understood very quickly that if I wanted to avoid a daily kicking I would have to try to fit in as one of them, but it was so very, very difficult.
By the time I was 17 all I could think about was becoming one of the girls and it was driving me insane! My grades were steadily dropping and my concentration was gone. When I was 18 and going to university I was driving up the old bendy road to Paisley averaging 90mph, just hoping that I might lose control and wrap myself round a lampost. Never happened obviously. Neither did my nightly entreaties to a god I never believed in to "Please! Let me wake up a proper girl or don't let me wake up at all!" When I found myself crushing on one of the guys in the class that was the final indicator that I had to do something.
One Halloween I got myself tarted up in some stuff I'd swiped from my sister, some other stuff I'd swiped from my mum and some of my own gear. I shaved my legs and armpits and gelled my hair, donned my sister's old school skirt and a gypsy top of my mum's and did my face in my own make-up. Last, but not least were a pair of my own court shoes. Then I went to meet my friends and none of them recognised me - one even had to go off on his own because he fancied me. I now thought that I might be able to go through with gender reassignment. By the end of the night I knew I could - I lost count of the number of times I was pulled out of the loos and told the ladies was on the other side of the pub. I was in my own wee private heaven and that year I stopped pretending to be a boy for good!
