A/N: Ever wondered why Jim took so long between graduating High School and signing up for Starfleet Academy? Here's why...
18-year-old Cynthia Kirk was stuck in a rut. Big time.
She'd graduated High School a year ahead of schedule with outstanding grades. But her discomfort within her own skin had become more serious with each passing year, leading to her feeling severely depressed. Since graduation she'd pretty much sat on her backside, unable to find the motivation to move forward with her life.
Her mother had been nagging her to do something useful with her life: go to college, get a job, sign up for Starfleet, anything. But Cyn's get-up-and-go seemed to have got up & went, so she spent her days playing games online and reading fantasy novels. Both of these activities gave her some escapism from the day-to-day hell of her life. Because whilst playing games and reading fantasy, she could picture herself as the male hero of the piece. She could picture herself as being a tall, strong, muscular, authoritative man. Just as she knew she should be.
The only times she'd venture out of the house would be to go drinking in Riverside. But the depression she suffered due to having spent the last 13 years simply existing rather than being able to enjoy life meant that many of those nights out would end in fights. Some idiot would make a disparaging comment about her boyish haircut or her androgynous clothing. Some other jerk would call her a 'dyke'. In the restroom, girls would call her a dork for not wearing make-up. Naturally, these comments hurt her terribly, so she would often be the first one to throw punches. As a result, her only significant achievement since graduating High School was to rack up an impressive list of misdemeanours.
Granted, she had done very well at school - but applying her mind to her work was one of the few things she enjoyed. It was difficult to enjoy anything else when her every interaction with other people reminded her that they saw her as a girl. It was frustrating and heartbreaking to see other boys developing naturally: getting girlfriends, growing muscle, growing in other ways. Big, strong, tall masculine bodies... whilst Cyn was trapped in a small, feminine body. It sucked so badly.
Hmmm. Trapped. In the wrong body. Now that she thought about it, that was exactly how she'd been feeling since she was little: almost as if her body didn't match her mind. People had been treating her like a girl because that's what her body looked like, but her mind had always told her she was a boy. Cyn had always thought she must be the only person in the world who felt like this because nobody she knew seemed to feel the same way, but she suddenly wondered whether anyone else had ever felt the same way. She fired up her computer and typed into the search engine: 'boy trapped in a girl's body'.
She was stunned. Hundreds of thousands of results were returned, including support sites, videos, medical journals... this was a thing; it really existed. Not only had other people felt the same way... but thousands of other people had felt this too. There was even a word for it: transgender. She settled down to watch some of the videos.
By the end of the evening, Cyn was shaking. She'd finally figured out what had been 'wrong' with her her whole life. She wasn't wrong, crazy or evil. It was perfectly clear to her that she was transgender. And even more importantly, thanks to other people bravely sharing their stories online, she'd discovered there was something that could be done to fix it.