Help Kelly live her truth

*updated early June:

I still don’t know if I’ll be able to have surgery in September.I don’t have much activity here and its very scary, very stressful and yes sad if I have to keep looking in the mirror with this image looking back at me. I’m hoping even with no loans panning out that somehow this surgery can still occur in September. I’m  going to my final consultation in July pre-(hopeful)surgery in September. I will have met my maximum out of pocket w insurance by then…it’s just coming up w the @3000 in travel expenses for approx two weeks in an Airbnb while I’d recover and have doctor follow ups. Thank you for your compassion…

Hi there, I’m Kelly. Well, it’s my chosen name I’ve used in secret for decades but not legally changed yet. I am transgender male to female. I have struggled with my gender identity for decades, but only allowed myself to start transitioning just over a year ago due to outside pressures in society & most of my own family. 

Growing up as a Christian child, I had prayed to God to take the thoughts and actions away or for Him to have me wake up a girl…or even not have me wake up at all.

As I got older into puberty and beyond, I hated what was happening to my body. I hated looking at it and often shaved all my body hair off. I wrote suicidal poetry in high school and had suicidal ideation. That school was even a private Christian school and I regularly wondered how “I” could be like this as a Christian, and I started to hate myself even more.

When I had been in high school marching band, I was so envious of the colorguard and cheerleaders and still didn’t know why. I wanted the thoughts to stop but they were incessant every day.

At the malls, I hated to shop and would try, in retrospect, to buy as boring and gender-neutral clothes as I could… jeans and tee shirts. i would find myself drawn to glancing in women’s store windows liking so much what I saw but was “not allowed” to buy, let alone wear. I did not like wearing collared shirts and ties… EVER… but didn’t even connect the dots why until so much later.

I had been raised Christian, yes, but conservative on top of that, and at the earliest stages, I quite literally thought that I was the only one in the world like this and had been cursed. Seriously. I was scared to death and took on the guilt and burden by myself for decades. When I was in my teens, Facebook and Reddit did not even exist, so I had no resources to know I in fact was not the only person like this. 

I learned subconsciously to “stay in my lane” and not rock the boat. When my father was dying from cancer 17 years ago and my mom was in so much grief, I had prayed to God to take me instead and spare my father’s life, as I truly felt trapped and that my life was not worth living anyway. For some reason, this obviously did not happen. So I went on suffering in confusion and guilt.

I started to develop toxic habits because I hated looking at my male body so much that it felt like a prison to me, and a life I never asked to be “living.” I was merely existing in it. Nobody else, it seemed, knew what this was like. In fact, early on, I had never even known the term “transgender.” 

Flashing forward, it was approximately 2003 and I had gone to the West Hollywood Halloween carnival as Alice in Wonderland with a friend. Only this time would be much, MUCH different than even other Halloween’s going as female characters…which had been a thing with me for a long time where it felt “safe” to present myself like that which I was comfortable SOCIALLY being seen as….

I had gone to a makeup artist and really, REALLY felt euphoria with how I looked… for maybe the first time EVER. People would ask to take pictures with me and when we talked and they heard my then voice, did not know I was male and something clicked in me that it made me so happy. I would, however, get an epiphany of sorts once I got home hours later where any denial of me being “just a cross-dresser” would be over for good. It was time to go to bed and take the costume, the makeup, the wig off after all the euphoria, the compliments, the confidence… and I… broke down hysterically crying and yes…threw it all away. Not long after, I DID seek out a therapist… but early on when she said she thought I might be transgender, I got scared of the possible truth and I stopped going cold turkey. And it stayed that way for decades more.

Around this same time, my gender dysphoria was manifesting much worse and faster than before. Deep down I knew it was not just cross dressing but the truth was too scary to face. But yes I knew my identity was at its core was misaligned w the body I was born with. The dam holding everything back was cracking and about to break altogether. I changed my name tag at my (then) employer in Florida from my born name to my preferred name but was still presenting male. I was STILL lying to myself that I was just experimenting socially with things. It was this period when it started to bother me greatly when customers called me “sir.” I even started to press myself and I “just” did my nails and bought women’s sunglasses because in my mind that’s how I felt even if I didn’t really look like it. I SO wanted people to interact with me, to be seen in the world as female. I really felt I did not belong anywhere. I was very uncomfortable going into the men’s restrooms even though I still LOOKED male at the time. I felt like a woman that was walking into there.

I started therapy again with someone who specialized in gender. I ended up quickly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and social dysphoria, as I was and do totally identify as the female gender.

I was given a prescription for HRT, hormone replacement therapy, on May 20, 2024… so I just recently passed one year on that! I cannot possibly express what a difference this has made in my life and how much happier and confident I feel in my mind and body. The “elevator music” almost immediately stopped altogether. I had been right all along about my suspicions that I am, in fact, transgender. The brain and the rest of the body are slowly, finally, becoming aligned which most people take for granted. My now ex and I are generally amicable and split for various reasons, NOT just this but it didn’t help I’m sure! I moved back to California and got work at Disney, where I had been full-time in Florida and was now transferring back to California, but the reality set in that I was not even told until way too late that it would only be part-time and less than ten hours a week put me in a huge financial hole I struggled to get out of. The chats just to drive cross country east to west coast with all of the hotel nights and gas. I kept applying for full-time work and it was very hard just to get interviews places.

I finally got an interview and later a position, and full-time, with a wonderful company in San Diego so I left Disney. I knew this other company had great insurance too and hoped I could finally get facial feminization surgery and vocal surgery as I also hate the way that my voice even sounds. That’s just part of what social dysphoria will do to a transgender woman. Between my debts before that only grew last summer with moving, the month delay in starting me at work with no income coming in, and then the rude awakening of just how few hours the part time status was going to give me, car issues, and more, all at the same time, I was getting worried but determined to finally live my truth and found a great doctor I decided on in San Francisco for facial feminization surgery, or FFS. I got notice from Cigna the doctor in question was “in-network” and I was so happy. But the reality set in that I do not know anyone up there and I have to stay in a hotel or Airbnb for approximately TWO WEEKS while recovering, due to so many follow ups in this type of surgery, and not being fully safe to fly immediately afterwards anyway. At this time, I have my second consultation with him scheduled on July 8 and the surgery scheduled September 15. I will be devastated if I have to cancel this year, even if I could maybe do it next year. I’ve waited decades for this.

I am presently in debt more than 6000 with a high APR that has been making it next to impossible to get ahead of… I was denied a loan for the travel costs for my surgery which is already scheduled for this September. When I was denied the loan, I broke down crying at work.

I never asked to be born this way. It’s HARD. But it’s who I am and I finally accepted that about a year ago. It was the most difficult and simultaneously best “decision” I’ve ever made for myself. I’m just trying to live my life and live that life authentically. Finally. I came out on Facebook on my exact one year, of hormone replacement therapy, HRT, May 20, 2025. I have no support whatsoever from my family (that’s a huge understatement) except for my younger sister. I’ve already silently suffered for decades and now I’m dealing with ramifications as though anyone chooses to hate themselves, feel uncomfortable looking in mirrors and taking selfies as though seeing a stranger looking back at them, go through painful hair removal, fly to cities for consultations to have FFS (my brow bone shaved down, cheek implants, rhinoplasty, trachea shave, etc. for a more typical female profile look all just so I can feel comfortable in a body that I (finally) can identify with. This is just some of what FFS is. It does what HRT alone can not. It also happens to not only be life-changing, but life-SAVING. With FFS, I won’t hate what I see in the mirror, people won’t stare and wonder “if that person is a…,” and my crippling gender dysphoria I’ve had almost my entire life will be GONE. I HAVE to do this, and can’t contemplate not doing it as even an option. After all these decades, I’ve never really been able to recognize my own reflection as “me”…my inner self, my internal picture I’ve always seen myself as, has always been out of reach.

I’ve been robbed of far too much of my own life living for other people at the expense of my own life and happiness. I need to be able to FINALLY look in a mirror and recognize the person I’ve always, always thought myself to be in the image of myself in my head, buried in a foreign body she’s trying to escape from and breathe.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I could say so much more even now, but it’s so long already. I can’t thank you enough for anything you can do. You cannot possibly imagine how positively this would help my confidence and my life itself.