I’ve just got off the phone with one of my childhood bullies. He used to call me names and hit me on the way home from school, but we’re friends now. He’s slightly in awe of my life today and, to be honest, so am I. This year has been intense. I have served as assistant editor of Gay Times, debuted as both Channel 4 and Radio 1’s first transgender presenter, fronted a successful awareness-raising campaign, All About Trans, topped the Independent on Sunday’s Pink List, partied with celebs, brightened up Question Time, travelled the country, spoken everywhere from Oxford University to Amnesty International, and written for the Telegraph, NME and the Guardian. Life wasn’t always this good.

“He’s only four, he doesn’t know what he’s saying!” That’s how my friend Emma, only eight herself, defended me from the older boys in the park. I’m a girl, I’d told them, though I didn’t say it out loud again. They hadn’t believed me; they’d just laughed. Adults weren’t keen on me saying it, either, and I soon got the message that I wasn’t (and never could be) a girl – I had a penis and that was that. I’d understand when I was older, apparently. When kids asked me why I “speak like a girl”, I’d tell them: “Maybe this is just how I talk.” I was beaten up a lot. A few years later I wore borrowed tights to school and used the girls’ toilets. No one knew what to do with me.

In my hometown of Hucknall, near Nottingham, there was one gay guy, who everyone was friendly with because he made them laugh, and one Asian family, who everyone knew because they owned a corner shop. This ex-mining community was unofficially headed up by the local hard man, a bouncer and former boxer who also happened to be my dad. My mother was 17 when she had me and found it hard to cope. My parents had a fiery breakup when I was a baby, so her sister, my lovely Aunty Rachael, and her mother, my caring grandmother – or Mama, pronounced “Mammar” in Hucknall – helped bring me up. I like to think I have my mama’s kindness, my mum’s charisma and my auntie’s morals. What none of them passed on to me, unfortunately, was a womb.

Paris Lees as a baby with Mama. Photograph: Paris Lees

I was often “difficult” and occasionally violent and it must have been challenging for my parents – they didn’t have information about what to do with a child like me. When I was very small my mum was tactile and warm and everything you want a mother to be, but she had her own problems and one of those was me. By nine I was beyond control and was sent to live with my dad. Mum went to Turkey and, although she insists the plan was always to work out there for the summer, I was never sure she was coming back. She was gone for three months. My mama and aunty cared for me, as did my father – although I find it strange to mention Daren and “care” in the same sentence. I was frequently told how much my dad loved me, but, like a magician, he had this wonderful way of hiding it.

Daren had made me gather up all my “girl” toys and put them in a box when I was sent to live with him. The boy-toys could stay – Pirate Lego and Mighty Max – but the Polly Pockets and Disney dolls had to go. You’re not at your mother’s now, son, he told me – and boy didn’t I know it. I’m still not sure if he thought it was unhealthy for his son to play with dolls or if he simply couldn’t bear to be around it. Or both. He told me he’d given the box to Barnardo’s, but when we went to look for it, the shop assistant told my mama that nothing like that had been handed in.

I used to wish he would die and I contemplated accusing him of bad things so I could be taken into social care and given new parents. He humiliated me for “walking like a poof” and gave me clips round the earhole for “talking like a pansy”. If I was naughty it was worse. Even if I was good it wasn’t much better – he forced me to try football and boxing and killing foxes with his macho mates and I hated all of it. If I’m generous I’ll say he was being cruel to be kind, trying to toughen me up. I wonder how many other parents are unwittingly ruining their children’s lives this way? I don’t think he realised that I needed less tough and more love.

No one in my family is religious but I decided to get baptised at 13 and I can only think it was because I wanted to fit in somewhere. I tried to conform but I was a complete outsider at school and I experienced the full spectrum of ostracism: people not wanting to sit next to me or walk home with me or eat lunch with me. I was kicked, punched and spat on and then told to stick up for myself. I hated going to school and I hated going home.

On my 14th birthday I walked into a public toilet. I went into a cubicle with a man who must have been in his 40s, who wore a tatty old denim jacket that reeked of cheap vodka and fags. There were lots of men like him round my hometown – some of them gay, some of them married – and they paid me to do things with them. They drove me out to the woods and I was happy to go, though my family never knew what I was up to. In this secret world I had something these men wanted – and that gave me power. I don’t remember what birthday presents I got that year.

Paris Lees: ‘Life wasn’t always this good.’ Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

My body started to become more masculine as testosterone and confusion kicked in. I began speaking to myself. I stopped myself going to the toilet. I felt strange.

Hypocrisy has never appealed to me and I soon stopped believing in God. I walked out of the vaulted church doorway and through one with an alcohol licence above it. Clubbing became my new religion and it introduced me to types of people I hadn’t known existed. I was tall and didn’t have problems getting into nightclubs, where I’d dance around with gay guys and cross-dressers who, like me, would go on to identify as trans women – a process we call “transitioning”. We got pissed and pulled guys and had lots of fun. Ecstasy. LSD. Cocaine. Cannabis. Crack. Ketamine. Amphetamine. Everything, really, washed down with Lambrini. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat.

After my nights out with boys I’d just met, I’d change into my uniform and go straight to school, fresh as a daisy. My mum and dad never came to parents’ evening, although, to their credit, they did visit my school a few times to see what could be done about the people who were bullying me. Not much, sadly. I did well in my GCSEs.

Daren told me he was sick of me using his house as a hotel so, realising I could, at 16 I moved out. You can do what you want when you live with friends. I didn’t realise it would be possible to actually be a girl so I made do with “dressing up” sometimes. I was too girly to fit in on the gay scene, though, and that’s really saying something. I frequently found myself in Nottingham city centre arguing with people who just couldn’t accept that a) I existed and b) had dared to walk down the street. I got a court fine for kicking a shop window through with my white Spice Girls platform trainers during a fight. They made me empty my bra at the front desk in the police station – it was stuffed with tights, tissues and God knows what else.

I fell for rent boys who made cash by pimping out younger lads like me. One that I was sweet on suggested we rob a client and, to my shame, I agreed. The police got us, but my friend refused to attend court and my life began to disintegrate – the judge was hell-bent on sentencing us together. The case dragged and I dropped any intention of transition – and out of college. I was sentenced to two years. If you’re lying on a prison mattress, you probably have to admit you’ve messed up. Some boys picked on me, but I won over most of them with my rude poems. A few couldn’t read or write, so sometimes I was allowed into their cells for half an hour to give them a helping hand. And I learned that writing letters can be quite invigorating. Sadly, some of my fellow inmates didn’t want to live and had the bloodstained bed sheets to prove it; I, however, did. I had Gay Times posters of hunks on the wall and I stole red chalk to use as lipstick when we were locked up for the night. And in my mind I painted a picture of who I wished to be. I wanted to be educated, healthy, respected and, more importantly, a girl. I made a pact to try my best. Life doesn’t end at 18.

I was released early from borstal and put under curfew – I had to live with Mama but managed to get it extended so I could work in the evenings selling dodgy timeshare in a call centre. After four months the curfew ended, my electronic tagging device was cut off and I moved into my own place. I was determined to finish my A-levels and went to college. Some other students called me “battyman” so I soon realised it wasn’t the right time and place to transition. Part-time call-centre work doesn’t pay the rent and I sometimes got the bus home from afternoon class to put makeup on for clients who liked that sort of thing. I was paid more for that. After they’d gone I’d smoke Marlboros and listen to Radio 1 while reading Wilde, Stoker and Voltaire. I got a cat. As I was waiting for my A-level results, though, a lesson arrived to teach me how short life can be – Mama died, unexpectedly. She was 54. I was heartbroken. A fortnight later I ditched the last of my boys’ clothes, stopped smoking and resolved to start a new life as a girl at university in Brighton.

Before I set off, I tried to get help. At a clinic in the leafy avenues of Sherwood, I explained to the doctor that I wanted to transition. She asked me if I wanted to become a man. I had a good laugh about that after but I didn’t get what I asked for. You have to see your local psychiatrist before they can refer you to a gender identity clinic, but the letter they promised me never came. When I arrived in Brighton for freshers’ week I was, physically at least, just a boy in clothes from Topshop. I must have checked my mirror at least 10 times as I walked along the seafront to meet fellow students for cocktails that first night. What if they noticed my big hands? They didn’t, or if they did they never said, but I was riddled with insecurities and it wasn’t long before I became utterly reclusive.

Paris Lees on BBC’s Question Time in October 2013. Photograph: BBC

I paid thousands of pounds for laser hair removal. I was still doing sex work: men travelled from all over the country to have sex with me and this made me feel special. They liked me because I was trans, not in spite of it, and sometimes it was good fun. There are plenty of attractive young men out there who would rather pay for sex with transgender women than risk the shame of dating us. I learned a great deal about shame. My mum was ashamed of me being trans back then and my lovers were too, so what did I have to feel proud about? It didn’t happen often, but if people called me “tranny” in the street I blamed myself and locked myself in my bedsit for weeks at a time. A prison sentence was better because you at least had an end date. I broke down. It’s such a disappointing transgender cliche, but here it is – I was suicidal.

It took weeks of missed appointments before I could finally walk five minutes down the road to the nearest doctor’s surgery. Dr Martin prescribed antidepressants and tranquillisers and referred me for specialist psychiatric care in London. I hated travelling to London, but I saw that putting myself outside my comfort zone could be a good thing – and it gave me hope again. I started being more open about being transgender and, after hormone therapy, I put on weight and began to look more feminine. Cognitive behavioural therapy encouraged me to leave the house more and meet people again. Including my boyfriend, who wasn’t ashamed of me. I was feeling stronger, but was desperate for meaning in my life. The answer seemed to be devoting myself to making things better for people like me. I helped out at a transgender charity and somehow managed to graduate from university, depression and prostitution all at the same time.

The wheel of fortune was lurching forward, so I gave it a good shove. I moved to London and did work experience at Gay Times, the magazine I’d read in prison while dreaming about my future. Paid writing work came in, here and there. Last year, with financial help from my mum – who is now my biggest supporter – I had facial feminisation surgery. The surgery undid the unwanted effects of my male puberty and, these days, if I run out of milk I just pop my hair in a band and nip to the local shop. No one bats an eyelid. My life can’t be reduced to a series of magical transformations, but I won’t deny that this surgery in particular made a huge impact on my confidence. And appearance. I look younger, now, than I ever did in my troublesome teens. I’m not going to tell you how old I am, although my friend could – the one who used to hit me on the way home from school. Can you blame me for knocking a year or so off my age sometimes? I’m making up for lost time.

Paris Lees presents My Transgender Punk Rock Story with Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace on BBC Radio 1 at 9pm on Monday