he came home flustered one day and asked her mum: "Am I a boy or a girl?"
Transgender woman Kelly Kimberly Cheong was only six years old when she first felt she was a girl in a boy's body.
The 21-year-old part-time waitress and voice actor says she never thought anything was wrong until she was bullied in primary school.
She says: "I always thought I was a girl because I didn't know about the different body parts then.
"Until people started calling me 'girly' and 'sissy', telling me to behave like a boy, then I decided to ask my mother whether I was a boy."
Her father left when she was only two, so she also did not know that having both parents was "normal" in a family.
Over the years, she has met her fair share of bullies.
She has been called "gay" and a "faggot", had her things thrown out of the window and classmates would hit her with badminton rackets.
Miss Cheong had few friends then but "they were never there for me".
She says: "They said they were my 'friends', but when trouble came, they all ran away."
Despite the bullying, she held her ground and stayed true to herself by growing her hair out and dressing like a woman.
As an ITE student, Miss Cheong struggled with depression - not caused by the bullying - but struggling to live up to her dying mother's expectations of her as a boy.
Her mother had Stage 4 lung cancer.
Miss Cheong says: "I tried to become a boy for my mother because she was going to die. It just didn't feel right for me to be a guy in jeans and short hair. It was horrible."
After two years of Miss Cheong pretending to be a man, her mother died.
She was 18 and felt alone.
"I tried to kill myself many times. I tried to poison myself with air fresheners, tried to sniff glue and even cut myself," she says.
But after harming herself for two years, she reflected on her struggles and told herself she had to live on.
In 2013, Miss Cheong threw on a wig and came out on Facebook despite knowing that there would be haters.
Some people posted nasty comments on her Facebook page but she had more than 5,000 fans within a year of coming out.
She says: "Some of my fans would even give me food and take me shopping."
While many may think that all transgender women are attracted only to men, Miss Cheong identifies herself as pan-sexual.
"Gender or sex doesn't affect who I am attracted to," she says. "If I feel that someone is worth loving, I will love that person."
Her partner of over a year was glad to see Miss Cheong through her transition.
The partner says: "When she first took hormones last year, her 'post-menstrual syndrome' was worse than what normal girls would have, but I was glad that I could console her and be there for her."
Miss Cheong says she is happy with how she has slimmed down and developed breasts after taking hormones.
She also has a wide vocal range, so she makes use of her talent to become a voice actor which pays her over $2,000 a month.
She has no plans on having sex reassignment surgery because she feels that "your genitals don't define you".
Miss Cheong is now confident of who she is and says: "I'd rather be hated for who I am than be loved for who I'm not."
She encourages people who are afraid of transitioning or thinking of coming out to go for it because "you live for yourself and not for others".
https://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/m...-transgender-individuals-open-about-struggles
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