Editor’s note: This article includes mention of suicide and self-harm. If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available here.

At 8 years old in rural Kansas, Hayden Dawson remembers being forced to eat outside with the dogs.

Other times, they weren’t fed at all.

“I would chew sunflowers outside because I was so hungry until my face would become splotchy with a rash,” Hayden, now 20, told Uncloseted Media.

Hayden, who is nonbinary and gender fluid, says whenever they wanted to wear boy clothes, play with boy toys or express themself in a gender nonconforming way, their foster parents were “highly offended” and worried that Hayden would be a “bad influence on the other kids.”

They lived in the turberlance for eight months until their caseworker changed their placement after noticing the severity of Hayden’s weight loss and the rash spreading across their face.

But the next home was not safe either. Or the one after that.

“You have to pick and choose,” Hayden says. “Do I wanna be happy in the identity that I am and the body that I want to have, or do I want to survive?”

By the time Hayden was a teenager, they became suicidal, cycling through mental health facilities and hospitals.