You’re more than just neither, honey. There’s other ways to be than either-or. It’s not so simple. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many people who don’t fit.

All the girls and women looked pretty much the same, so did all the boys and men. I couldn’t find myself among the girls. I had never seen any adult woman who looked like I thought I would when I grew up. There were no women on television like the small woman reflected in this mirror, none on the streets. I knew. I was always searching.

I think girls and boys should be able to be any way they want to be without getting picked on.

When my alarm jangled in the morning, I awoke feeling small and terrified. I couldn’t find myself in my own life – there was no memory of me that I could grasp. There was no place outside of me where I belonged. So every morning I willed myself back into existence.

I remembered earlier in the summer I’d found her working in her garden, sweaty and flushed with heat. I laid her down in the grass nearby and pressed her body into the dirt with my hips and kissed her mouth until she made small sounds of desire I recognised.

I want to understand about change – I don’t just want to be at the mercy of it. I feel like I’m waking up inside. I want to know about history. I have all this new information about people like me down through the ages, but I don’t know anything about the ages.

Every day the men around me came to exercise their bodies; I came to exorcise my demons.

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

I remembered Duffy’s challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar.

I wanted to thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have known I had a right to be me.