Claire humored her parents, even as her frustration with them mounted. Eventually, though, something shifted. In a journal entry Claire wrote last November, she traced her realization that she wasn\u2019t a boy to one key moment. Looking in the mirror at a time when she was trying to present in a very male way\u2014at \u201cmy baggy, uncomfortable clothes; my damaged, short hair; and my depressed-looking face\u201d\u2014she found that \u201cit didn\u2019t make me feel any better. I was still miserable, and I still hated myself.\u201d From there, her distress gradually began to lift. \u201cIt was kind of sudden when I thought: You know, maybe this isn\u2019t the right answer\u2014maybe it\u2019s something else,\u201d Claire told me. \u201cBut it took a while to actually set in that yes, I was definitely a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
Claire believes that her feeling that she was a boy stemmed from rigid views of gender roles that she had internalized. \u201cI think I really had it set in stone what a guy was supposed to be like and what a girl was supposed to be like. I thought that if you didn\u2019t follow the stereotypes of a girl, you were a guy, and if you didn\u2019t follow the stereotypes of a guy, you were a girl.\u201d She hadn\u2019t seen herself in the other girls in her middle-school class, who were breaking into cliques and growing more gossipy. As she got a bit older, she found girls who shared her interests, and started to feel at home in her body.<\/p>\n
Heather thinks that if she and Mike had heeded the information they found online, Claire would have started a physical transition and regretted it later. These days, Claire is a generally happy teenager whose mental-health issues have improved markedly. She still admires people, like Miles McKenna, who benefited from transitioning. But she\u2019s come to realize that\u2019s just not who she happens to be. <\/p>\n