Alice: another transgirl begging for surgery money

I’m a trans girl. Scratch that, I’m a girl. One with serious testosterone poisoning to the face, which has psychologically messed her up for 13 years. But the health system won't help me fix it

Our faces are what we show the world. They’re how other people work us out, how we express ourselves – and they’re how we recognise ourselves. They’re our social organs, and because of that they’re very important to our self-image – duh. So as mine increasingly masculinized over the 13 years since I realized I was a girl with a Y chromosome, it began to destroy my perception of who I was – which spilled over into how I interacted with others and the world around me.

Thirteen years of intractable depression, a couple of attempts on your own life, the destruction of so many relationships and ambitions… That’s apparently what it takes to finally pull together the courage to become who you really are.

The New Zealand government deems Facial Feminization Surgery ‘cosmetic’ (as opposed to genital reconstruction, which is ‘gender affirming’), as an excuse to avoid funding it AT ALL. So the aspect of trans healthcare which would most truly help to affirm my gender is something I have to arrange on my own.

So when I came out, I took out a $5,000 bank loan and had a dermatologist fill my face with liquid plastic. It’s far from the surgical outcome I really need, and it’ll only last a year. But what it’s done for me is unreal. When the doctor held up the mirror to show me his handiwork, I burst into tears for a solid 5 minutes – I actually recognized the girl in the mirror. Over the next week or so I periodically burst into tears when I caught my own eye in a window or mirror, and I still do involuntary happy dances at my own reflection. I have the confidence to hold my head up high and happily interact with others as a woman. I feel at home in my own skin.

I’m genuinely happy, genuinely myself for the first time in my life. THAT is what this means to me

I just want to make it permanent, to securely own my own face. It’s hardly the only element of my transition, but it’s the most dear to my heart.

I'll obviously be saving my backside off, but between a mortgage, child support for twins and the (many) expenses that I've discovered go with being trans, what I can do alone is limited.

I don’t’ think I can put into words how much any help at all would mean to me

- Alice Lilly MacLachlan