Learning about the existence of transgender people for the first time, at college, allowed me to start imagining a future for myself. Researching trans issues became a round-the-clock hobby: instead of going to class, I endlessly watched videos of trans men at various stages in their transitions, read blogs about gender identity, researched the effects of hormones, and tried to piece together my identity and my future. After eight months of exploration, I decided I wanted to start hormone replacement therapy, and I started coming out to friends and family as a transgender man.

At this point, gender fluidity and gender neutrality was not being discussed in the media as it is today by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Shamir Bailey (a singer who said, “To those who keep asking, I have no gender, no sexuality and no fucks to give”)

To help them understand, I opened up about the gender dysphoria I had experienced throughout so much of my life, and I asked them to use a new name for me, and new pronouns (he/him instead of she/her). She was the one to help me with all the logistics, from legal paperwork to doctor’s appointments. After just one appointment with the gender therapist, I was deemed “transgender enough” (meaning I knew how to say “I feel trapped in the wrong body”) and was given a prescription for testosterone.

I was thrilled at the prospect of hormones – I imagined they would bridge the gap between my body and my true self

‘I didn’t feel like a man; I didn’t even know what feeling like a man meant.’ Photograph: Benedict Evans for the Guardian

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The next year was incredibly exciting. My body was growing and changing, and my life was shifting along with it. I dropped out of college, got a role on The Glee Project 2 (a reality TV show in which contestants compete to win a guest-starring role on Glee) and moved to Los Angeles. Every day brought new surprises. Waking up with a different shoe size? Cool. Waking up to shoot a music video? Cooler. I was singing every day and my vocal range became unpredictable; I mourned the loss of my high notes, but was ecstatic every time the lower end of my range increased. Everything was changing so rapidly that I could barely keep up, and the fact that I still felt disconnected from my body did not help. As a result, I rarely reflected on whether or not I had made the right e more stable and my beard filled out, the novelty of manhood and of puberty slipped away, and I found myself slipping back into depression. I attributed this to everything but my newfound identity: the pressures of being on TV, hating Los Angeles, feeling lost in terms of my career when the show ended (I didn’t win the role on Glee). It wasn’t that I was in denial; I just assumed that my identity was a done deal – that I had figured it all out.

After being on hormones for a year and a half, a voice in the back of my head told me to stop taking testosterone. I didn’t feel like a man; I didn’t even know what feeling like a man meant. My breaking point came when I sat in my closet for two hours, talking to the camera in my laptop about feeling lost. This video was solely for catharsis, and for my own eyes. During that two-hour session, I came out to myself as a non-binary person: someone who does not identify with either binary gender (man or woman).

I had recently come across the concept of non-binary gender identities while reading blogs written by trans people. Back then, I had never seen the topic addressed publicly, or by anyone in my life.