Everything didn’t come together until they saw a doctor in their early 20s. The physician verified that van Dorst, who had experienced difficulties fitting in as a young girl and later as a young woman, was born intersex—having features of both male and female sex—and had had surgery as a newborn. Their parents had never discussed it together.
They now claim, “I never felt like a girl.” “I also never felt like a boy. I was unsure of how to feel and what to think.
Years of frustration were explained by the doctor. I started to feel like my head was malfunctioning a little, but then everything made sense. It felt rather relieving. Simultaneously, I experienced extreme sadness. Before I worked up the guts and the energy to talk to my family about it, I felt distant from them for a long.
