THE WARRIORS OF T
Sam Renton (he / him), plays for the Edinburgh inclusive rugby team, The Caledonian Thebans. In a personal, and candid, article, Sam tells us how his journey, from high school to playing for the Thebans, helped with his mental health. Transgender people are more likely to suffer from mental health issues than people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, heterosexual and cisgender. Each person is different, but some of the trans related causes could be dysphoria: how people are perceived in their physical frame, their voice, their gender expression, but also being born into a world where society is still deciding trans rights. With a lack of education at school around wider LGBT+ identities, and what it means to be anything other than heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, I became depressed at the thought of being different. I’ve always been told that high school was ‘the best days of your life’. If high school was the best days, then my life was going to be a ‘great depression’. I spent most of high school trying to find out who I was, while trying to fit in and planning for the future because it seemed that anything less than university was a failure. The immense pressure I put myself under was amplified by school. The need to do well,
to find yourself, to figure out your future plans, was terrifying. Much of what I loved, I gave up. I tried to be a stereotype, a girly girl with the brain of a boy. Uncomfortable in almost every situation, I knew something was different. I had no education besides Urban Dictionary and I was questioning who I liked and what gender I was for five long years. I thought exams were the end. When I left high school I thought it would end, away from the pressures and cliques of high school, but it just came back. In 2018, I finally realised that I was transgender, seven years after beginning to question everything. Those seven years can be summed up in one word: depression. I didn’t know what that meant or what the symptoms were, but I now know that I was depressed. My depression continued and it was all I could see. I had good days and bad, and my bad days sometimes had suicidal thoughts. My future was bleak, I thought that it wasn’t going to go away
