"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix" - from 'Howl and other Poems' by Allen Ginsberg.

This is the opening stanza to a poem I read on the way to my own 'negro streets', also known back then as 'the ghetto', any ghetto. That one line cut to my quick. That was me---enraged, betrayed, desolate, far more alone than any kid should ever be. I didn't know it yet, but within days I'd be living in a graveyard in downtown Boston, passing my nights huddled inside a garbage bag trying to hide from some very real dangers. It was 1967. I was 12 years old, and already shattered.

School had been a nightmare. I was one of the smartest kids, loved to learn anything, the problem was I didn't fit into either of the gender slots, and for this I was continually humiliated and shunned by the other kids. I had no idea back then why I was treated this way, the consistent message was simply that I was unacceptable. Around grade 7 I began experimenting with alcohol and various drugs in an effort to control the shame that was starting to cripple me. While my teachers were showing off my scholastic abilities and encouraging my folks to "aim that child as high as you possibly can", all I wanted to do was disappear and hide, from myself and everyone else.

If you're a man reading this, try imagining waking up one day with . . . breasts. If you're a woman reading this, try imagining suddenly sprouting a penis and a beard. Think about how self-alienating that might feel, how misrepresentative that would be, especially, say, at around puberty. Put yourself in the 'appropriate' locker-room, naked, surrounded by other kids delighting in the very same type of body you find yourself concealed in. You have no script for this. You've been cast into totally the wrong role, the wrong costume. It's all horribly wrong, you have no feel or sense of this character, but the show continues, and act you must, however awkward. You know you don't belong here, you're terrified someone else might see it too.

But you don't know why. You don't dare talk about it, don't even have the language. There is no one to explain it, nowhere to turn. While the others are flaunting and exaggerating their pubescent developments and mimicking their favorite role models, you find no role model, see yourself reflected nowhere. Except in the cruelest jokes, the most cutting remarks. You desperately make up a persona as you go along, flubbing your lines, one faux pas after another. An obvious misfit, you quickly become their special target. Then the teachers get in on it, misinterpreting your drastic drop in grades and your defensive and seemingly antisocial behaviour as intentional, disruptive, manipulative. You're singled out further, desk moved into the hall and now you sit where everyone in the whole school can see you and ridicule you, until you can "learn to behave yourself".

At home it's just as crazy-making, constant pressure to tow the (gender) line. The 'innie' line, or the 'outie' line, no exceptions. Clothes, behaviour, hair, activities . . . pronoun . . . name . . . everything must reflect the designated gender. There is no relief, no way to get away from it. There is only leaving . . . via drugs, via running away, via suicide.

I tried all three, have spent many of my adult years recovering from the damage caused by the first two before I could even begin to repair the damage caused by growing up under such relentless pressure, caused simply by not fitting adequately into the 'boy' slot or the 'girl' slot. 'Gender ambiguous' is how it's referred to today. Transgendered, possibly transsexual.

This intolerance towards any diversity cost me enormously, my home, my family, my youth, and, equally, my education. I was gifted, and I was tormented, endlessly humiliated and picked on. No matter what I tried, I couldn't make it work. So finally, just to survive, I ran, blindly, as faraway as possible, bitterly aware of everything I was sacrificing, but flat out of any other options.

Almost 30 years later, I am still gifted, and no longer tormented for who I am. As a transitioning female-to-male transsexual, I have finally attained my freedom to move through life relatively unafraid; now I'm seen by others the way I've always seen myself. I fit into one of the 'slots' now. I'm mercifully invisible, just another guy, no longer a prisoner in that dreaded 'ambiguous' zone, no longer the easy target for cruel comments, jokes, threats.

For many transgendered and transsexual people this is not the case, will never be the case. The mismatch remains visible, the bullseye resides on their forehead. The price they pay is by far the graver, because it is never-ending.

I believe with all my heart that educating school staff, health care staff, parents, anyone involved with youth, can have a vast and lifesaving effect on all our kids, not just the ones who would otherwise shatter and die. By normalizing all our diversities, gender and sexual as well as racial, body image, cultural---to name a few, and providing accurate information and positive role models of all variations, so that every child can see themselves reflected and included. This will protect our children from what happened to me and so many others, many of whom did not survive. This will put a candle in the window, that each and every child can be guided on their own unique and rightful way. This will protect and provide for their actual futures as well.