I love spending time with my family and friends; it's great to have moments like these. However, for a long time birthdays and the like served as a sort of annual self-reminder that I hadn't really been living. But this year something changed.

There have been so many days where I didn't believe that I could make it this far, but I'm so happy that I did. I could talk about my pain or why it's taken me so long to reach this sort of heightened sense of clarity, but I don't see what good that is going to do for me or anybody else reading this.

I don't know why I'm here. I'd like to believe it's all for some sort of purpose rather than sheer randomness, but, nonetheless, I find myself grateful for the experience. To my knowledge, my human life is all I have ever known; I'm not ready to waste what could be my one and only.

Well, what does that mean? What has kept you wasting all this time? To put it frankly, I'm afraid of losing these moments. That being said, life just isn't very special being sad all the time. So to whoever it matters, I'm transgender. That's it. This might be the only mention you hear about this subject from me because I don't really think it should matter; it just happens to be one of many things about me.

Whether or not you sympathize with me as an individual or whatever I'm trying to say here, I do believe I can offer some sort of advice. Ask yourself what really matters to you and pursue it. It may get hard along the way, but please keep going.

Love,