London Marathon. 24 April 2027. It Gets Better UK. Athens was to see if I could. Berlin was because I could. London is for the kids who don't believe they'll get the chance.

I'll be honest: when I was younger, "it gets better" was a phrase I filed under things people say because the alternative is saying nothing. I was depressed, I was queer and trans without having the words for either, and I had a massive need to either become someone else entirely or to not be around for whatever came next. For a long time I didn't really picture myself making it much past 25, which is a strange thing to type now, on a page that is eventually going to end with me asking you for money.

I'm 32 now. I wake up at 7.05 every morning (every morning, I don't know why) next to George, my partner, which is not a bad way to start a day, and I have enough time to make absolutely mediocre latte art before work. I put clothes on without thinking too much about it. I have a goddaughter who is growing far too fast, and my heart keeps having to expand to keep up with her height. I have people I love, work I care about, plans for the future, and apparently, I run marathons. My life is quite ordinary, and I cannot stress enough what a plot twist that is. So yes, it did get better. Not magically, not all at once, and not because someone told me it would. It got better when I stopped waiting for permission to unfold.

Now, the running. I ran track as a teenager and I loved it, and then at 13 I dropped out after one practice and never went back, and it took me about 15 years to understand why (dysphoria, and depression, but that's another story). Skip to now and here I am again, loving the sound of my feet hitting the ground. Literally. I run without music, so for several hours that is all there is: my feet, my breathing, the rhythm of the combo. People hear this and look at me like I've confessed to something (absolutely psychopathic behaviour, I know). I could run without racing, obviously. But racing carries that 13-year-old who could not understand how any of that was an obstacle to sport, to fun, to life.

I'm a non-binary trans man. At Berlin this year, non-binary runners were 0.1% of the field (I checked, it's a habit). At London last year, there were 113 non-binary runners in a field of 66,393. London has had a category for us since 2023, which most races still don't, so usually my time gets filed under "male" and that's that, and in the grand scheme of things none of it matters, except in the ways that it matters very much. It was never about the time anyway. It's about being a possibility. Being the 0.1%, holding up that space because we have a right to it, and running straight through it.

So, this time, I wanted to put my money (and yours) where my mouth is, so I'm running for a cause that feels close to all of this.

It Gets Better UK started in 2018, as the UK arm of a movement that began with one YouTube video telling queer kids to hang on. It's small (small enough that your donation actually gets noticed), it's run by queer and trans people, and its job is specific: fewer LGBTQ+ young people hurting themselves. They collect stories from queer and trans adults, on video, in a podcast, in a zine, and put them where a 15-year-old who thinks they're the only one in the world will find them. They turn up at Prides. They've trained 995 hairdressers to make their salons safe spaces. In the UK, 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ young people have had suicidal thoughts and 1 in 3 have self-harmed. The charity exists so that fewer of them have to find out on their own that there is an after.

The target is £2,500. If you can give, thank you, truly. If you can't, share it, or come find me somewhere around the 30km (I'll be there for a while) and shout. George will be doing exactly that, like he did in Berlin, running across the city to appear at random corners at the exact moment I was considering giving up. You're welcome to join him.

See you in April.

P.S. Trans people belong in sport. In marathons too.

If you're young and queer and things aren't okay right now, It Gets Better UK has support resources at itgetsbetter.org.uk/get-support.