I would probably tell my younger self, "Just be you. Don't be afraid to be you."

I definitely have a really goofy personality most of the time, and I used to hide that a lot. And life wasn't as fun when I would hide that.

I've noticed once I did admit to myself that I wasn't a cis-gendered female, that I started to feel a lot happier all the time. I always had this feeling that something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what was wrong.

I thought: maybe I need to move out to a different town; maybe I need to have a different job, a different place to live.

I kept trying all these different things and nothing ever felt right until I admitted to myself that I'm not identifying in alignment with how I feel.

Once I finally did that, life just felt so much easier. I still struggle with some things mentally, but I've gained so much euphoria in just my day to day life. And I wouldn't change it for the world.

To decompress from the attacks on trans people, I try to find ways that I can put my foot forward and help out even if it's just small things, like donating to local LGBT organizations, and speaking to the public about our experiences.

I talk to people throughout the day and it helps me because I'm realizing that I'm informing people about things that they didn't know. So that definitely helps me feel better about it.

But there's so many people that still need to know about gender and the struggles that a lot of people are going through with it. So as long as I know that I'm doing what I can do, from where I'm at, that definitely helps the overall situation of it.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta ]