For me, the thing that sealed my transition was a depression trip. A few years ago, I had just come to terms with being trans and came out to my girlfriend. Being a cis person, she didn’t take it well. Rough month. I was having second thoughts about transitioning just because of how awful my social environment was for transitioning. Well the night before my first family dinner after accepting I’m trans, my birthday dinner, I dropped molly, just ate shrooms out of the jar when I had pounds at any given point, and took a random amount of acid tabs from a full sheet. I took an insane amount of shit, I have no idea how I maintained any sort of lucidity. Terrible idea, don’t do it. Track your doses, and Most of the trip was hellish and depressing. However, there was one moment in the middle of it that was completely life changing. I had been bawling my eyes out all night because I just felt the pressure of never being accepted as my chosen gender. I looked in the mirror (also usually a terrible idea on trips) and didn’t see what I expected to see. I saw an insanely beautiful woman staring back at me in the mirror. Long curly hair, brown eyes, bright red cheeks, freckles, she was me! I wasn’t seeing who I was in that moment, but I saw the woman that I wanted to become, and realized that it was perfectly attainable. I spent at least an hour just staring at myself in the mirror during that trip, I was completely entranced by the idea of that being what I looked like on the inside.

As a child, I always imagined this girl with a flowy dress standing next to dried bush, with the overcast of an early October afternoon. I always thought that was my dream woman, but in that moment in the bathroom, I realized it had always been me. I was imagining who I wanted to be.