Report by Nicole Sommavilla at SNN-
A Suncoast man is sharing his transition story hoping to help others. (Mason Fitzpatrick was formerly a Prevention Specialist at CAN Community Health)
“The only way that I can explain it is living 24 years and feeling like my entire body was chained to the ground, that no matter what I did or said, I was never free,” says Mason Fitzpatrick as he thinks back to his childhood.
Fitzpatrick knew as a toddler the name Megan didn’t fit. “I hated with a passion women’s clothing,” he says. “I always felt like I just stuck out.”
By 14 he told his grandmother he was transgender. “She looked at me and she’s like I’ve known that forever now, and it doesn’t matter to me at all,” Fitzpatrick recalls. But it wasn’t easy coming out.
His biggest fear was letting his mom down. “I felt like I was taking away her daughter, there was a part of me that was like I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive myself,” Fitzpatrick says. “I’m taking away a mother’s dream of having a daughter and being a grandmother.”
Of course he had nothing to worry about. With his family behind him, Fitzpatrick began taking testosterone in June 2015, and had top surgery last March. “It was the best experience of my life,” he says.
For the first time, he finally saw himself. Now Fitzpatrick uses his social media as a platform to help people going through the same battles he once did, and his impact reaches across the pond.
“I’ve connected with people in Ireland, I’ve connected with people from Europe,” says Fitzpatrick. “This one is from Poland, and she used Google Translate to write me a letter.” Even sending him a lucky coin.
Even though he gets plenty of backlash from sharing his story on social media, Fitzpatrick says it’s what he was meant to do. “If something that I’m going through and there’s the slightest possibility that I can help someone else, why not?”