In a recent interview, Lola Albin a transgender teenage girl, talks about some of her life experiences.

When did you realise you were transgender?

There was never an exact moment when I realised that I was transgender. I’ve always felt like I was out of place, like I never felt like I was where I was supposed to be, and I never knew who I really was. I’ve been to various schools, mixed and co-ed. None of
them felt like the right place to be until I got moved to a performing arts school when I was in year 8.  

I thought I felt comfortable, but the more comfortable I felt, the more I knew something wasn’t right. I realised that I was bi, I came out to my family and they didn’t really understand. I thought that this unsettling feeling would go away, but it didn’t. Something still wasn’t right. After that I realised that I wasn’t looking at girls in the way I thought I should. I came out to my family as gay and this time they understood a bit more. I still, after all this, didn’t feel right. I then started telling a few friends that I am a girl; I then told my sister. We planned together to tell my family. I just couldn’t do it; in the end my sister told them because I just couldn’t say the words. I eventually started wearing the girls’ uniform and everyone started to call me Lola and I’ve even got my name legally changed.

What advice would you give your younger self?
You don’t have any friends but that’s ok, because you don’t need friends because you’ve got yourself. If you feel sad or if some people don’t like you, it doesn’t matter because those aren’t the kind of people you want to like you. You’re different, so embrace it.


Have you ever been mistreated for being transgender?

There was a time when there was a trip to Sri Lanka that I was really excited to go on with my ballet school. The lady who runs the club said I could only go on the trip if I went “as a boy” and wore the boys’ uniform and stayed in the boys’ room. I didn’t go in the end,
because she didn’t understand me.

What’s something that helped you find yourself?

Something that helped me find myself was drag race and it sounds cliché, but there were people who just did whatever they wanted and who looked gorgeous and it just spoke to me and got into my soul and that’s when I started feeling more in the right place. When I realised I was a girl, I was inspired by a drag queen called Valentina, so I decided to drag for myself. Generally, people think that drag is for men and not for women. Many people to say women can’t do drag. Women are capable of whatever they want to do.
 

What would you say to people who don’t understand someone who is
transgender?

If you are against it because of religion, I’m not religious but I believe that God meant for me to be a woman but put me in this body and he gave me this journey to travel on instead of handing me my identity.