Elliot Page shares ‘biggest joy’ about transitioning in personal essay

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

Elliot Page has penned an essay for Esquire about his experience as a transgender man.

“The Umbrella Academy” star wrote “I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself.”

“I know I look different to others, but to me I’m just starting to look like myself,” he wrote. “It’s indescribable, because I’m just like, there I am. And thank God.”

Things haven’t always been so joyous for the Oscar nominated actor, who first shared his transgender identity in December 2020.

According to his essay, he was bullied as a child.

“Bullying puts you in a place where, later, you have so much unlearning to do,” he wrote. “If you’re getting teased and made fun of and called names on a daily basis, there’s no way that’s not going to get inside of you—particularly when you’re already feeling so much shame.”

He said he didn’t expect the reaction to his transition “to be so big.”

“In terms of the actual quality of the response, it was what I expected: love and support from many people and hatred and cruelty and vitriol from so many others,” he wrote. “I came out as gay in 2014, and it’s different. Transphobia is just so, so, so extreme. The hatred and the cruelty is so much more incessant.”

But Page is more than happy with who he is.

“The greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present,” he wrote. “To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn’t feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out.”

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