Imagine living your life and knowing something is not quite right. You can never quite figure it out. In many situations you just don't feel comfortable. You become withdrawn and quiet. There are very few people who you trust, and in general you find it very difficult to trust at all. There is never a time that you can figure out what is wrong but you go on. Life has to move forward and you do your best to fit in and be productive. You become a people watcher and figure out what everyone else does and you try to emulate what they do every day. Fitting in becomes your goal but you secretly want to be out front leading. That’s the rub because you never learned to be you. You only learned how to be them. Life becomes an act in a play and never feels like it’s your life. Then one day you find kink. You find a tribe of people that are your family in many ways. For awhile you feel better; like you have found your home. This is a group of people who, for the most part, accept you. Your eyes are opened to many wonderful things. Experiences pile up but as time goes by you realize that you still feel the same. That feeling is still there and you haven’t been able to fix it. Even when you see other people doing what you know you want, you won’t admit it. You deny liking it in any way. You lie to your friends and kink family. That paints you into a corner and you begin to live how you think they would want you to. Those feelings get buried even deeper down. Everything you do is to hide them because you can’t admit it. You won’t even admit it to yourself. You become filled with shame. All of this builds into a great sadness in your heart. It begins to effect every part of your life. Depression begins to take hold of you and pull you into a great darkness. Kink loses its appeal and you go through the motions but it's no longer as exciting as it once was. You begin to be hard to get close to, and people notice. Every small comment becomes a huge ordeal and you lash out fiercely. This only fuels the fire. Your world begins to crumble. What you don’t understand is that you really caused most of it yourself. You are not a bad person. You just have this deep down aching need that you have ignored for 20 years. Eventually you've had enough. If something doesn’t change there will be a melt down. You are forced to take a long hard look at your life. The correct decision is made and you see your doctor and go on medication. That’s when your journey changes. As you begin to feel better and the fog lifts from your eyes you finally see it. Happiness replaces sadness. Happiness becomes the most important thing in your life and what other people think about it doesn’t matter anymore. You move towards what makes you happy. It starts slow but once you begin to move it picks up speed. People around you think it was fast but it was really 20 years in the making. They only saw the last 1%. They only saw the part that let you say those most important words…. I am Trans. This was my story. This podcast will tell my story and the stories of other Trans people. Welcome to “Journeys”.