zine draft digital edition

a poem by Max
from when they first
realised they were trans

Dysphoria I
by Kelso

sexually attractive. It was like
this higher plane of existence
where I seemed to find where
people couldn’t tell if I was
a boy or a girl. Where I got
told I could be a model. Still I
hadn’t figured out I had some
gender issues.
I went in and out of phases
of bingeing to feel good about
my emotional state and then
skipping as many meals as
I could get away with, and
it felt good, I felt human. It
wasn’t until I was 16 that I
acknowledged that I might be
anything other than female,
previously just assumed
that I was wrong to exist. I
managed for a few more years
on and off going through
phases of bingeing and
starving. Until I went through
a bad stage in my relationship
with my now ex-girlfriend
(who was also trans) who
had so little regard for my
name, my pronouns or my
body. That hurt but I knew a
way of dealing with it. That’s
when I started purging. It
was a combination of dealing
with gender dysphoria
through self-harm and a
method of getting thinner
and reaching that genderless
state which I craved so badly.
It was around this time that
I became very mentally ill
and self-harmed any way I
could find any time I wouldn’t
get caught. This was the
most dysphoric phase I have
ever been through. But I
recovered a bit after being
caught through pure fear of
what other people might do if
I continued.
When I stop eating everything
sort of slows down and the
world becomes a lot less,
everything is so much calmer
and happier. During my first
year of uni towards exam
period I relapsed but then
I got my first binder, it was
second hand from a friend
who bought it off ebay for less
than £5, It was awful but I had
never been happier. I pulled
my act together just in time
to actually have a functional
brain for exams.
So over the next few years I
relapsed and got better.
And relapsed and got better.
And then finally I started