Chrissy Dior was born male but was never comfortable with her gender.

At 15 years old she began living life as a female — and has never looked back.

“I knew from as early as four years old that I was gay,” the 30-year-old Bermudian said. “I can remember being as young as eight and telling my brother that I had a crush on a boy at school. He said not to tell anyone, particularly not my family. That’s when I knew I was different.”

She said his advice to keep it underwraps turned out to be for the best.

“Not coming out right away was the right advice because it allowed me to be me and build up strength,” she said. “At that age, if I had tried to come out, they would have tried to scare it out of me. You know how adults are.”

It wasn’t until she was a teenager that she understood that she was really a female.

One of Miss Dior’s happiest childhood moments was when she dressed up as singer Tina Turner for a school competition at age ten. She won the competition and everyone was agog at how good her costume was.

“I just felt like me, on that day,” she said. “I look back now and see that I won that prize because of my courage and strength. Nobody mistreated me, they were just impressed with the costume.”

When she did finally come out as gay and switched to living life as a female, the response from friends and family wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. Her brother was one of her biggest supporters.

“I did lose some people but that was okay,” she said. “When I made my transition they were gone, and really, I didn’t have them to start with.”

These days she believes it’s trendy to be different, but it certainly wasn’t when she was a teenager. She said she knows one or two other transgender people on the Island, and a few who have left Bermuda because it was easier living in a less socially conservative environment.

“I love my country,” she said. “I’m not letting anyone push me out.”

One of the challenges of being transgender in Bermuda is dating, she said. Things go well until the boyfriend’s friends and family get involved. She has learned, the hard way, to keep her romantic relationships private.

“I am not ashamed,” she said. “I have met the friends and family of my dates and had close relationships. I don’t care who knows, but I don’t put everything out there on Facebook.”

Miss Dior is frustrated by people who think of being transgender or gay as a choice.

“It’s not a choice,” she said. “It has been proven that it is not a choice. Some people don’t get that and it scares them seeing something they don’t understand. When I first transitioned to female some people said ‘you just want attention.’”

But Miss Dior said if she was attention-seeking there were certainly better ways to do it.

“People ask me all the time if I was molested when I was young,” she said. “I had a beautiful upbringing with a mother and father in the home. Nothing dramatic ever happened. Sometimes it is hard for people to understand how I came out this way without something traumatic happening to me.”

Miss Dior said she has grown to love the person she is.

“I believe we are here on Earth to love,” she said.