I've always presented as male, up until the last year. I was just your typical bogan ` just metal T-shirt and black jeans, burnouts and heavy metal music, pretty much. Like, you couldn't have got a more, sort of, staunch guy, to be honest. But I think that's because of the denial. I'm originally from a small town. I grew up with only having a mother,... in a home with a open mind and an open heart, and not to judge other people, especially disabled people. Mum was a healthcare worker, so everybody was treated like an equal. We interacted with a lot of different people in society, but being in a small town, there was no 'rainbow' anything. Mum was my best friend ` couldn't get enough of second-hand shopping with her. Mum always used to say that I should have been a girl, especially come teenage years. I'd cry all weekend over a girlfriend. No boys are doing that. They're off getting another one. I could remember going to the beach ` 5 years old, you know when you dig a hole, kid jumps in there and you, like, make them into something? I wanted to be a mermaid every time. And that was around the time I started to realise what my inner differences were. But it doesn't mean I understood it. It took me a long time. I had a lot of days, probably around the age of 14, where I would look in the mirror, just fixated on the mirror, wishing, hoping. But when I was a teenager at high school,... transgender people were something at the back of the paper that others in class made fun of. It was a really depressing time. You know, I tried to kill myself even before the age of 15. I've always been depressed, had social anxiety. I never felt like I belonged. I never felt human. Unfortunately my mum died. One of my brothers was in prison and the other was raising a young family, driving a truck. So, our family split apart. I don't know if you can see it through the camera, but I do have some pretty awesome scars on my arm. Pretty much,... the first time I felt... so low was... after Mum passed. She had` You know, she had strong beliefs, and one of the things was never to kill yourself no matter how hard life gets. She rode out cancer and died, so (EXHALES) I couldn't really imagine anything harder than that. So I turned to self-mutilation, pretty much because I had so much hurt in my heart, confused about who I was. I just lost the support person that would understand. I came out to my partner. We had been together ` the girl that I came out to 10 years ago, that I got scared back in denial with ` we had spent a whole decade together. And we were actually meant to get married within two months of me coming out. And, yeah, just world closed in. 'I can't marry you as that guy.' And she was just like, 'Well, cool. There's no point in, like, pretending any more, you know. 'In the weekends, you are gonna be a girl.' And it all started with a trip to Auckland, and I wore her clothes, obviously, cos I didn't have any of my own. And I can still remember stopping at the Bombays and gassing up the van for the first time. That was the first time I'd ever gassed up a car. That's how it felt. First time I went to McDonald's. That was the first time. So we just went on this awesome day trip and... I think we spent well over a grand and just went to every shop that we could and went to Supre and bought five pairs of tights. Why not? That's what girls do, you know? This actually comes from that day, and, yeah, we just went on this awesome chicks' day out and just did everything. It was awesome. My advice to anybody, you know, whether you're young or old, is fuck what people think. As soon as you point your finger at anybody else, you've got 10 fingers pointing at you anyway. So you probably wanna stop worrying about what other people think and just be you anyway, because the world will get so much brighter. I've been through hell and back in my own transition, understanding it. If I had somebody that helped me embrace it more in the early days, it would've helped. (UPLIFTING ELECTRONIC MUSIC) So, my name's Katerina Clark. When I was coming to terms with who I was, I did google, like, 'support groups in Tauranga', and nothing came up. And so that's where I teamed up with Rainbow Youth and created Rainbow Corner ` an information support desk for LGBTQ people to come to and hang out, be proud of who they are, meet friends and talk about issues and topics and things like that. And that's what I wish I had when I was coming out. That's all I needed. Not to be too negative, but there's lots of times when you, sort of, think... you know, what is actually special about me as a person? It's proven the point that we do have a place in society, no matter who you are. There was acknowledgement that there's diversity in the community and everyone's accepted ` come and join. And I was actually just blown away. One of my biggest regrets is not coming out to my mum, cos I never got a chance to meet her as the true me. But I think a mother and child's bond, sorta, says that anyway. Like, she would've known. She would've been probably, 'Oh, what took so long?' (CHUCKLES) The start was really hard. I had a whole town that basically turned against me. I did come out in Thames, which is... It's a shithole, to be honest. It destroyed me a little bit, made me wonder, 'Is this right? Is this who I'm meant to be?' But every time I looked in the mirror, you know, it over-rid all that. I could see the person that I am inside. I learned to love that person. But as time gets on, like moving to Tauranga, I have the confidence now, you know, to go to the beach by myself. It's more just, 'Fuck it. This is who I am, and I'm not gonna change.' I've gotta be me for me. Each week, I suppose, I get a little bit more confident. I've started believing people when they tell me I'm beautiful. That's a huge thing, cos so many people just say it anyway, and it's like, 'OK, that's just a cheap pick-me-up.' But then when you look in the mirror and you see it yourself and you make yourself smile, that's unworldly. If you capture that and sell that, you'd be a millionaire. (GENTLE MUSIC) Captions by Ella Wheeler. Edited by Ingrid Lauder. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018