In an interview in QX comes Lee Christiernsson, formerly known as “Snickar-Björn” in TV4’s Finally home, out as transgender. “I see it as if I’m becoming 2.0 now, just a little nicer and better,” she says.
In the interview with QX, Christiernsson, who now calls herself Lee, says that she already had an “interest in the expression of the opposite sex in clothes, shoes and jewelry” as a child.
“I’ve always known that I’m different, that something is ‘wrong’,” she says, and tells us that she pushed the feelings away for over 40 years. “I’ve really been sitting on the lid to keep it from opening, because somewhere I’ve known that if I open this box, I won’t be able to close it again. I have pushed all these thoughts and feelings away.”
After a divorce in 2018, Christiernsson took the first steps towards “finding herself”, as she puts it. But lifting the lid on gender dysphoria led to depression and problems with alcohol:
“It is quite common for people who have not yet been able to accept their gender dysphoria to start abusing, it can be anything from gambling, sex, drugs, alcohol, shopping. Everything to distance yourself and keep busy. For me it has been work and alcohol. But when the jobs disappeared [under pandemin] I drank a lot during the depression, I could have drank myself to death because at the end of the depression I was completely destroyed,” she says.
“For the last 30 years of my life, I want to feel free”
Then one evening in March about two years ago came the turning point:
“Suddenly it just hit me, it was a realization and a feeling that was almost physical: I am transsexual. And I know what I have to do, to be free, to save my life – I need to get out. It was like I got an extra life right then and there,” she says. “I need to get out and I want to do this proud, healthy and sane.”
Although the transition to becoming Lee involves physical changes, the TV profile points out that she is still the same person on the inside:
“I have two sides, and I have only shown one. I see it as if I’m becoming 2.0 now, just a little nicer and better. For the last 30 years of my life, I want to feel free, with a body that suits me and the way I always wanted it to look.”
Christiernsson’s journey has been documented in “Becoming Lee” which will be shown on TV4 on Monday February 6th and Monday February 13th.
