I'm 46 years old and I'm the first from my high school and college friends to have come out as trans. I'm sure there's others, but nobody's told me.

The first group I came out to was my kayaking crew. Extreme whitewater kayaking and paddling through a rapid – that’s the moment when my whole mind gets clear of all of the stuff in my head. I just focus on that moment of going through extreme whitewater, because there's no space for anything else.

It's this amazing clarity, and I couldn't lose that. I couldn't possibly live and not have access to that environment.

So, it was important to me that the first people I told were some of those people that I went out with all the time.

Whether you first start coming out or have been out for a while, it's always hard to tell another person: "Hey, by the way, I'm trans."

It sucks – we're always coming out. There's all these stories of people being rejected, friends ditching them, being absolutely horrid. Though these are my friends, and I actually liked them, and thought they're going to be okay, (I don't hang out with jerks, I hang out with people who are actually nice), that fear persists.

I knew my kayaking crew would be okay as there’s already a nonbinary trans person in the group and they came out as trans five years before I did. When I first started paddling with these people, I had no idea about pronouns, because I don't think anybody has a clue until you're confronted with either a friend who's transitioning or you yourself are.

So, one part was telling that kayaking crew. The other was to tell a group I met while working as a professional sailor, and who have become my best friends of 25-30 years.

My sailing friends basically said, "Awesome, this is great. Come hang out with us."

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued tomorrow]