to come and live with her I grabbed the opportunity with both hands, I was desperate. When I arrived at her house it quickly became clear she had not been honest with me and she had her own problems with alcohol. My lowest point was having to return to Jersey, knowing I was effectively turning my back on transitioning but I knew more than anything that I could not go back to my old ways of escapism. I honestly didn't care if I lived or died, living a lie was slowly but surely killing me. If you had been able to see statistics for trans people's mental health I wouldn't have registered on them because the medical establishment didn't see me as 'trans' anything, they saw me as a male. I had asked my local health authority for help with transitioning and was fobbed off, given a prescription for some happy pills and told that the reason I wanted to transition was because I was depressed and I just needed to keep my mind occupied on something else. My experiences are not unique, a recent study undertaken by the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (www.teni.ie) showed that 44% of trans respondents had self harmed and 40% had attempted suicide in their life while almost 4/5ths had thought about ending their life. This compares with 4% of attempted suicides in heterosexual, cis-gendered people. (http://www.livescience.com/13755-homose\\... ) The pressure that comes with being transgendered is huge. I have lost friends and family because I