Mak: TRANSitioning into The Final Form

Hi, my name is Mak, but I own a pc.

If you know me, I apologize for you having to see that joke again.

But if my jokes aren’t cheesy, how will people remember my name?

I promise, from here on out, the jokes will never be that bad.

Who am I?

I live in Los Angeles with my awesome, supportive roommate Steve, and our landlord Nori, who’s some kind of border collie/flat-coated retriever mix. Don’t ever skip the cheese tax. She’s stingy about that. I work from home, running operations for a small, leftist consultation company, volunteer as calendar coordinator for a non-profit organization, and run tech on a monthly support group for people with chronic disabilities. I’m starting to apply to Master of Social Work programs so I can become a post-traumatic growth therapist for kids, a career I fell into and absolutely love. Watching people heal themselves with guidance and tools is like watching miracles bloom right in front of you, fireworks of triumph across people’s faces.

Oh yeah- and I am nonbinary and started coming out over a decade ago. I tried a life run on estrogen and it was not for me. I’m transgender, meaning I was correctly diagnosed at birth as being female, but misdiagnosed as being a girl. And who among us hasn’t gone through a misdiagnosis?! That’s why they still call it practicing medicine, not perfecting medicine.

Nonbinary means being a “boy” would also be a misdiagnosis. I am not-binary. Not of the binary boy-or-girl system. It’s nowhere near as cool as my watercolor paintings of mermen. Or that I used to be an American Sign Language interpreter for a pirate metal band. But those are stories for another time.

Short Version of What’s Happening:

I started medically transitioning in the fall of 2020 because after living in quarantine for a few months and having to sit still in my own body, I realized how unhappy I was in it. By spring 2021, I started hormone replacement therapy, then came the surgeries and extreme weight loss (-138 lbs. at the time of posting). Barring the need for any touch-ups or emergencies, I will have my final surgery on March 16th, 2024.

Up until this point, I have paid for everything and utilized every resource I could. I did this through homelessness, unemployment, an autism diagnosis (which makes a lot of sense in retrospect; the quirkiness, it was autism all along), and strong bouts of depression. But I did it. While I was there to support others in my community, my friends, my family…it just didn’t occur to me to ask for help in return. In my head, I had this idea that if I wanted to transform myself, I had to prove it through suffering?

It was awful. Do not recommend. Ask for help, people. Learn from my mistakes.

I started this fundraiser now because I’m on the brink of debt. I am asking for help.

Your aid would help me with:

Again, any and all help will be so greatly appreciated, and thank you so much for even reading this far. Thank you for reading through the bad jokes. If all you can do is boost my message, that would mean the world. Don’t put yourself in debt to help me stay out of it.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Max Alan Kestin

(See the initials- that’s my name! Thank my mom for that one, she picked it out.)