I'm the youngest of four siblings and the baby of the family. My family just treated me like anyone else growing up. They taught me that everyone has a special and unique trait about them, and that mine is that I have a girl brain and a boy body.

I've always known exactly who I am, but growing up has always been a struggle. I've even been called an 'it.'

I wish everything was gender neutral. I wish we weren't separated by boundaries like pink and blue and little things like that. I wish we could choose how we express ourselves without hate.

Being transgender isn't a medical transition. It's a process of learning to love yourself for who you are.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

My iPhone stays on. All my friends and family know that I hate the phone, so no one calls me on it. I just use it to play Words With Friends and take pictures of cute shoes.

If you were there behind every family's closed doors, everyone's a little wacko. Chances are that your family is no weirder than the next family or than the other girl at school's family. Everyone can be quirky at times, and I embrace that, personally.

I eat right, I sleep, I work out, I'm happy. I have a beautiful family, nice friends. I choose the good things. I choose the happy, healthy things. I don't choose the bad, unhealthy, unhappy things.