My name is Josie Totah - And I'm ready to be free

Like many trans people, I developed serious anxiety as I hid who I was. In some ways, I felt like I was lying by letting people believe I was that gay boy. I also couldn't be myself. I hid the girls' clothes I really wanted to wear under sweatpants and sweatshirts. And I had an enormous fear of male puberty. Once I got on the hormone blocker, which basically stopped my testosterone, that part changed. I wasn't waking up every day and panicking. "Is there hair on my face? Is my voice getting deeper?" Those changes are very hard, if not impossible, to reverse. And I knew that I was giving myself what I needed, that I didn't have to be afraid of that anymore. [...]

This week, I'm going off to college. I'm also going to continue my acting career, and I am so excited to do both things as myself. I plan to play roles I haven't had the opportunity to play. And I can only imagine how much more fun it's going to be to play someone who shares my identity, rather than having to contort myself to play a boy. I'm going to gun for those roles, be it a transgender female or a cisgender female. Because it's a clean slate - and a new world.

source: Article 'My Name Is Josie Totah - And I'm Ready to Be Free' by Josie Totah; Totah has acted in shows such as the NBC comedy Champions and films such as Other People; time.com/5371387/josie-totah-transgender/; Time; 20 August 2018