I’m trans – top surgery saved my life

On the May 14, 2017, I was sure I would die when years of deep depression culminated into an attempt to take my own life.

I was 16. 

I woke up in the hospital in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see beyond the curtain surrounding my bed, and could hear only the echo of light breathing and the sharp beep of the machines.

The searing pain that had wrenched me from my body hours before had now lulled to a low throb. At that moment, I felt anger. I had wanted to escape the pain I was in, and here I was, suffering even more. 

Looking at my arm, I noticed I was wearing one of those hospital bracelets. Someone had crossed out my old name and written ‘Oscar’ in its place. I cried at that small act of kindness. 

At this point I had been out as transgender for two years – it was a tough couple of years, but I was blessed with a mum who supported me unrelentingly.

However, I had to deal with the realisation that I had lost all my friends, most of my family, and that bullying and death threats were now an everyday part of life.

I had people spit at me in the school hallways, send me messages telling me to kill myself, and on one occasion a group of boys in my year came to my house and tried to kick my door in. 

But none of that had brought me to the hospital that day.

What did was the simple fact that it would be several more years until I could get top surgery. I couldn’t live like this any longer.  

Until the age of eleven I lived quite happily. Those around me questioned why I wore boys’ clothes, why I’d cut my hair short, and whether I was really a girl.

It didn’t bother me, but I didn’t understand why I made people so uncomfortable. Luckily my mum wanted me to be happy, and dismissed everyone else’s concerns. 

Then without warning, my body began to change. My clothes didn’t fit anymore, clinging to me in awkward ways. 

With every curve that erupted, I detached further and further from myself. I somberly realised that I must be a girl after all, and with ‘big school’ looming, it was time I started acting like it. I told myself I had to grow up.

And so my days became filled with poor attempts at eyeshadow, curly girl YouTube tutorials, and a pervasive numbness. 

This numbness was causing a sense of detachment – I was drifting away somewhere else, and it became harder and harder to bring myself back. I was told by my CAMHS therapist about giving myself pinches and snapping elastic bands on my wrist as an aversion technique, but it soon stopped working. 

That’s when, at around 12 years old, I spiralled into a self harm addiction. Wanting to do it, doing it, and hiding that I had done it, became the primary structure of my day.  

It was after steeping in that numbness for another two years, that I first came across a trans person online. At that time the only stories of trans people I could find were YouTube videos from people based in the US, and soon I was spending my days watching and rewatching every word they spoke.

Separated by an ocean and a generation, they recounted stories just like mine and without knowing it, they had pointed me towards the exit of the crumbling building I had been stuck in for so long. 

And so, with a supportive mum by my side, I made my plan of escape. I was to go to the GP and get referred to the gender clinic. Then, undergo assessments. And finally, wait four years until I’m 18-years-old, then get top surgery.

But four years is an incredibly long time.  

Every day I would wake up, shower in the dark, get changed with my eyes closed, and contort myself into a chest binder – a compression undergarment designed to flatten my chest. It was several sizes too small and often bruised my ribs. I did all that just to make the day a little easier to cope with. 

I’d spend the day at school getting ridiculed, constantly looking over my shoulder, and dreaming of a day where I could bear to be present in my body. My life had become a cruel race against time.

Due to NHS bureaucracy and Covid, four years stretched into six. I fought the urge to give up every single day, and there were several times where myself and my loved ones thought I’d never make it.

Then, finally, I had top surgery in April 2021, and it was the best day of my life. 

I could lay back and put my hand on my chest without flinching. I could go outside and feel the wind brushing my t-shirt along the skin of my back. I could take a deep breath without a sharp stabbing pain in my ribs from the binder. I could swim in the sea I had lived right next to for years. The wait was finally over. 

That October I moved away to university, finally well enough to live on my own. Then in 2023 I founded Transilience, North Devon’s trans organisation with my mum, leading a team of trans young people.

I had begun the life that had so nearly been lost. But so many of my trans siblings haven’t – 42,000 trans people in the UK are still waiting. In fact, many are looking at an eight year wait before they even get the chance to speak to a specialist. For comparison, in 2015, my wait was eight months. 

I feel so distraught thinking about all the people who are suffering like I was. So, I’ve chosen to devote my life to all the people who did not get the chance to live as I do. 

Yet over the ten years that I have been ‘out’, and the two years I have run Transilience, I have watched our rights be meticulously stripped away. 

Every step we take towards removing trans people’s right to healthcare – every day, month and year that is spent waiting with no support – is another life lost. The deaths of Alice Litman and dozens of others should be enough to wake us up to the reality that something needs to change.  

My trans friends and chosen family, the people who share their art, bring over spare slices of cake, give each other DIY haircuts, check in when the news looks so bleak, and carry each other through everything – they deserve for their lives to be saved too.

Gender affirming care is suicide prevention. It saves lives.

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