Bruce Jenner: 'The female part of me is who I am'

It’s official. Bruce Jenner “identifies as a woman.”

“I’m emerging as myself. Isn’t that great?” the former Olympian champion and triathlete told Diane Sawyer in the early part of the much buzzed-about exclusive interview that aired on ABC on Friday. “The female part of me is who I am. I identify as female, and that’s very hard for Bruce Jenner to say, because I don’t want to disappoint people.”

But it’s not as though it was an unexpected admission from the former athlete, who is now most commonly known as the former stepfather to the Kardashian children. Much speculation in the buildup to the two-event assumed that Jenner’s transition was the focus of the discussion.

“I would say I’ve always been very confused with my gender identify, since I was this big,” Jenner told Sawyer, gesturing to a small child.

“Here I am, stuck. I’m me. I’m a person and this is who I am. My brain is much more female than it is male. It’s hard for anyone to understand this, but that’s what my soul is.”

But Jenner admits that the transition has been far from easy—and in fact, there were times where he even contemplated suicide, imagining taking a gun to his head.

“[But] I can’t do something like that,” Jenner says. “I want to know how this story ends.”