He had a sex change surgery at the age of 18. Less than a year later, a teenager regrets his decision saying, "I feel as though I have ruined my life."

In a commentary published on The Daily Signal website Nov. 17, Walt Heyer, a former transgender himself, writes about a letter he received from a boy he calls Nathaniel.

Nathaniel told Heyer that he was bullied by boys at his elementary school because he was sensitive and liked playing with the girls.

When he was older, he stumbled across pornography on the internet and also investigated transgenderism and he said, "convinced myself that's what I was."

Heyer writes the teen finally worked up the courage to tell his mother when he was in junior high which then led to an appointment with "a doctor at an informed-consent clinic."

One week after his 15th birthday, the boy started seeing the clinic's doctor. And Heyer relays how he describes the next few years of going to the clinic that didn't improve his life.

"From then on," Nathaniel says, "I slowly detached from everything until I was just staying home, playing video games, and going on the internet all day. I stopped reading, drawing, riding my bicycle. I surrounded myself in an echo chamber that supported and validated my poor decisions, because the others were also, unfortunately, stuck in that pit, too."

One month after his 18th birthday, the teenager had his genitalia removed and also had to have facial surgery to make him look more feminine in appearance.



Nine months later, he wrote:

"Now that I'm all healed from the surgeries, I regret them. The result of the bottom surgery looks like a Frankenstein hack job at best, and that got me thinking critically about myself. I had turned myself into a plastic-surgery facsimile of a woman, but I knew I still wasn't one. I became (and to an extent, still feel) deeply depressed."

Heyer points out the unpopular truth which Nathaniel learned the hard way is "a man is not a woman and can't ever become a woman, even with surgically refashioned genitals and feminizing facial surgery."

"The benefit of sound, effective counseling," he points out, "would have prevented this horrible mistake from happening. He will deal with it for the rest of his life."

And what about the doctor and the clinic who advised, brainwashed and changed this young man's life?

"No one will help this young man to detransition," Heyer explained. "The so-called 'informed-consent clinic' (as if a teenager can give informed consent) washed their hands of him. The reckless ideology claims another life."

As CBN News has reported, Heyer has lived this transgender nightmare as well, eventually detransitioning back to a male 25 years ago after realizing he shouldn't have tried to become a woman.

He says he's been contacted by hundreds of transgender regretters over the years, and the crisis is only getting worse as the transgender movement has gained popular support in the culture.

Through his website, SexChangeRegret.com, and his blog, WaltHeyer.com, Heyer raises public awareness about those who regret gender change and the tragic consequences suffered as a result. His book is titled Trans Life Survivors.