All through my emergent years I had little interest in sexuality. Puberty called late, when I was seventeen. In many ways I was innocent. But I had plenty of confusion, shame and guilt about my gender. I sometimes dressed in female clothes when my parents and brothers were out - and pottering round the home I'd feel happy and at ease with myself for a few hours - but later feel furtive and ashamed, not understanding what made me do it, and carrying a hidden guilt. It was only decades later that a GP referred me to a gender specialist and I started to feel alright about being honest about my feelings, and to accept myself.

Today I live an ordinary life, and do an ordinary job, and try to be kind, and make mistakes like we all do. Accepting myself has been the easier part though, because it is just psychologically normal and a kind of naturalness of who I am and how I seem to have been made: but what has been really distressing has been the impact on other people, people I tenderly love. So I don't feel jubilant.