I never talked to my friends much about it, so they seemed surprised when I finally admitted I had a problem.
How they never realised, I don't really know. It's not as if they weren't aware of my issues. I guess I was just adept at projecting the aura of someone who was a happy, whole person.
Anyway, there's the usual litany of woe; abandoned as a child, first by my mother, then by my father - who later re-married and snatched me out of the care of my loving aunt and uncle, because I was the family 'shame' since I wanted to be a girl, not a boy.
Fifteen years of psychological abuse at the hands of my bigoted stepmother left me a fragile, frightened, robotic creature. This was promptly followed the suicide of my birth mother and being dumped by my partner - so by twenty I was a seething emotional shipwreck, a few spars of sanity remaining above the heaving seas of my life.
To say that I'd been depressed for 'years' was a gross understatement. I'd been depressed most of my life, but it was such a natural state of being that I didn't know that there was anything wrong with me. I'd like too say that when I switched genders that my life got better, but in many ways it got worse, because of the external influences making me miserable. People aren't kind to transgender women, especially ones who don't 'pass' as women or who are known to be transgender.
I tried explaining to some of my friends how difficult things were, but they didn't get it. They had no frame of reference, nor did they seem to believe there was anything wrong with me, because my mask of 'okayness' was so firmly fixed.
When my brokenness started to shine through the cracks and my psychological problems spilled into their backyards, they scrambled to divest themselves of my friendship.
After that, my father hanged himself.
I read through the coroners report and my name was constantly cited as being one of the major causes of his depression; that the strain of having a transgender 'son' had put too much pressure on an already burdened man.
Thrown the curve-ball of losing both my biological parents to suicide, I felt pretty much fucked - genetics were against me, as well as a world that didn't yet accept people like me. The spiral towards my own suicide was in turns gradual and steep. Problems at work with being harassed for my gender and online bullying by my former 'friends' brought things to a head and eventually I decided that I didn't need to stay above the waves any longer.
It was time to walk into the ocean and leave it all behind.
On my way to the pier I walked past my counselor's office and on a chance, I called her.
She answered and we had a conversation that pretty much saved my life.
From there I began to climb out of my spiral and get to grips with some of my issues.

I'd never been particularly close to Tammy; to me she was a peripheral figure in the trans community. One of those trans women who wore flamboyant makeup, silk kimonos and crazy wigs, daring people to judge her any more than they already judged her for who she was.
But like me, the secret toll extracted on her existence had eventually forced a crisis and I was the one who saw her cry for help on Facebook, at 11:30pm.
After calling an ambulance I tried to raise her, but she was incoherent from the pills. Thankfully the ambulance swiftly picked her up and by the time I got to the hospital, she was gargling charcoal and puking up prescription pain meds.
That was a long night of my life; I stayed with her until 11am the next day, when they released her.
She came home with me and spent a week living at my house, under my supervision.
It was strange experience. In many ways I had assumed she was stronger than me, with her 'fuck the haters, fuck society' attitude, but instead it was me who turned out being the strong one. My staid, closeted behaviour gave me the breathing room to recover from the cruelties, the comments, the hatred and the bigotry. By trying to blend as just another woman, by trying to forget I was trans, I found my balance of sanity.
At the end of the week Tammy went home, claiming to be completely recovered.
I knew though, looking at her, listening to her and watching her fall back into the same old patterns that she was destined for many more cries for help - and that one day I wouldn't be awake at 11:30pm or 1am or 3am and she would end up the same as my mother and my father.
So I selfishly let her go, knowing that if I continued to immerse myself in her paradigm, there would be two dead trans women, not one.
Perhaps one day she would wake up as I had done and realise that I didn't need to wrap my identity around me like an armoured cloak; that all I ever wanted was to be just a woman, not a trans woman.
And the only way I could do that was by quietly living my life, hoping that she would take note of how stable and grounded I was becoming; the less I immersed myself in that bizarre world of extreme, radical feminism and perpetual victimhood that was damaging her so severely.
Because I refuse to be part of that bullshit and I refuse to be dragged down by another suicide.
There comes a time when people have to decide whether they want to be happy or whether they want to be righteously angry.
Being angry was never that important to me.