I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.

I really don't care how I am perceived by people on the outside.

Anxiety, depression, and suicide don't discriminate based on how much money you have - though it might make it easier for you to get help.

I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the [U.S. Disciplinary Barracks] as the person I was born to be.

I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.

I think the increased ubiquity of the internet and networked computing in general allowed me to have some tether no matter where I was geographically. I could log in to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the same information and the same people. It allowed me to transcend the physical differences.

I lived a few miles outside of a tiny town in central Oklahoma. I would often run amok though the fields of wheat, the patches of trees, along the railroad tracks, and on red dirt roads. This had a profound effect on my view of the world - vast, open-ended, full of opportunity, and ready for exploration.