Issa Ismail was only 19 when she decided she wanted to live as a man.
She was called Alia then. She changed her name in August 2015, began testosterone treatment, and a year later underwent a mastectomy in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Her voice became deeper, she grew facial hair, and her body transformed as she had hoped. But something didn’t add up.
By the third or fourth year of treatment, the depression had set in and did not go away. Issa says that was when she began asking herself questions she had not wanted to confront before. In February 2021, after 6 years living as a trans man, she decided to stop taking testosterone and begin her detransition to return to living as a woman.
Today, she is 26 and shares her story on social media and in interviews, not to publicly express regret, but to lend a hand to those who also doubt their own path.