(CNN) — Elliot Page wrote an essay for Esquire about his experience as a transgender man.
The star of “The Umbrella Academy” wrote “I cannot overstate the greatest joy, which is actually seeing oneself.”
“I know I look different to others, but to me I’m starting to look like myself,” he wrote. “It’s indescribable, because it’s just like, there I am. And thank God.”
Things haven’t always been so lighthearted for the Oscar-nominated actor, who first came out as transgender in December 2020.
According to his essay, he was bullied as a child.
“Bullying puts you in a place where you have a lot to unlearn later,” she wrote. “If you get teased, teased and insulted on a daily basis, it’s impossible not to internalize it, especially when you already feel so much shame.”
Page said he didn’t expect the reaction to his transition “to be this big.”
“In terms of the actual quality of the response, it was what I expected: the love and support of many people and the hate and cruelty and criticism of so many others,” he wrote. “I came out as gay in 2014, and it’s different. The transphobia is so, so, so extreme. The hate and cruelty is much more relentless.”
But Page is more than happy with who he is.
“The greatest joy is being able to feel present, literally just being present,” she wrote. “Going out with a group of new people and being able to relate in a way where I don’t feel that constant feeling of running away from my body, that endless feeling of anxiety and nervousness and wanting to leave.”