Benji now believes the stress and academic pressure she felt at home was a key instigator of her escape into a trans identity. “I think it helped me dissociate from the person my parents thought I was or the person I was expected to be within my family,” she said. When she complained online about her parents, queer adults often coached her on running away from her family. At the time, she believed that these adults—not her parents—had her best interest in mind, and that they were generally helping her to escape mentally and physically from a tumultuous home.
