I was also rubbish at being gay. Even though I moved to Brighton and came out in my early 20s and subsequently lived there for the best part of 30 years I never felt like I fitted into the gay scene. I never felt like I was a proper gay man. Now I know I wasn't.

When I hit adolescence I realised that I was sexually attracted to the other boys around me. I simply could not comprehend how I could be gay. The trauma from this literally destroyed me. I developed Hashimoto's - an autoimmune disease that normally affects women!

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I've tried being every kind of boy. I was a particularly rubbish straight boy. One girlfriend said that having sex with me was like having sex with her best friend. That makes a lot more sense now.

Veering wildly between "you must be fucking kidding" and "I want boobs".

A really important point (to me) I came across in a YouTube video was that perhaps, quite early on, it's possible to come to the conclusion that the knowledge that you are trans isn't safe to know. It therefore gets buried until your psyche decides otherwise. That's where I am now.

Transphobia has been making me sick to my stomach for years. I used to think it was because it was a reflection of the homophobia I experienced when I was growing up but now I'm beginning to understand that it was touching something deeper and hidden.

Now I know why I've always preferred straight rom-coms to musicals.

It's surprisingly satisfying wearing nail varnish for the first time.

I left school 40 years ago with 3 good A-Levels and a serious personality disorder. It's taken this long to heal. Now I've finally made some progress, the authentic me is starting to emerge.

Well this is weird. The other week I told my therapist I felt like I was coming to the end of my therapy but instead it looks like I've simply unlocked a whole new level.

I've spent my adult life thinking I was an unhappy gay man when in fact I've been an unhappy trans-woman.

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