Hannah Gadsby

You see, when you are forced to keep a trauma secret in order to survive, you need to actively avoid incorporating the traumatic event into your official version of self. You don’t forget it, you just don’t put words around it. And when there are no words, there is no sharing. And when there is no sharing, you can’t find your way back to safety.

fuck you, puberty. It really cramped my entire existence. It’s very hard to be gender-contrary once puberty hits, especially if it hits you in a way that gifts you with sudden-onset childbearing hips, debilitatingly painful cramps, unpredictable periods and massive mood swings. How could I possibly be a boy if, at a glance, I looked and behaved like a perimenopausal woman?

Makeup seemed like self-torture; jewellery, as you well know, was beyond me; clothes interested me but for all the wrong reasons, like warmth and pockets.