5 Things We Learned From Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair Interview

With the release of next month's cover of Vanity Fair, Caitlyn Jenner was welcomed into the world. In a telling interview with Buzz Bissinger, Jenner discussed her mother, her family, her fans, and what it's like to finally be true to herself. Below are just a few things we learned:

On her life after the Vanity Fair cover story comes out:

"I'm just going to go live life, I'm going to go enjoy life. I have nothing left to hide. I am kind of a free person, a free soul. [Up] to this point I would wear, you know, Bruce would wear, you know, sweatshirts with hoods on them so paparazzi can't get pictures and all that kind of crap, and I didn't want them to see if my fingernails were polished or, you know, on and on and on. It was just hell."

"To be able to wake up in the morning, be yourself, get dressed, get ready to go out, and just be like a normal person. That's a wonderful feeling to go through life. I've never been able to do that; it's always been confusion, it's always been, you know, I've got one side [with] boy clothes, the other side's women's clothes. It's like I cleaned the whole closet out--the boys stuff is gone, ok?"

On her relationship with her mother:

"My mom is, for 89 years old, is extraordinarily open-minded. I'd wonder how her reaction will be, but like most people, it's all, all the emotions are in the anticipation of meeting you. Once they meet you and they spend five minutes with you, they go, 'Oh, ok, I get it, big deal, let's go on with life.' And I think my mom will kind of be the same way, especially if Caitlyn keeps sending planes to pick her up and bring her down."

"We had a conversation the other day, we were talking about a lot of things, and, you know, she goes, 'You know what, I think I can have a better relationship with Caitlyn than I can with Bruce,' because we've always had a little tension in our relationship throughout the years. [. . .] And so when she ends the conversation, she goes, 'Ok, good-bye, Caitlyn.' It was very funny, very cute."

On what her life has been like since the Diane Sawyer special:

"Honestly, since the Diane Sawyer piece, every day it's like, it's exciting to go to the mailbox . . . Because I get letters every day from all of these people from all over the world. I've gotten a lot from trans women, and telling their story and telling how excited they were to see the Diane piece. And so for non-trans people, just regular people who watched the games and now they see this, they're just so proud of you."

"But I so appreciate those things. I mean, I read every one of them, a lot of them I answer; in fact, the other night I got a letter from a trans woman in New York and she had so many interesting things to say, but at the end she left her telephone number, so I called her."

On how she hopes the public will react to her coming out:

"I hope they're happy for me, ok? I hope that they all understand that life is very complicated. That [the gold medalist they remember] was me in 1976, I did that and I am extraordinarily proud of what I was able to accomplish. I make no excuses for it, but that was all of me that did that, it wasn't just Bruce, it was all the things that--I was a dyslexic kid, I was suffering from gender dysphoria, I had all these other issues in life, but when I latched onto this thing called sports, I probably latched onto it harder than most kids did. Why? Because I needed that."

On what it was like seeing herself all glammed up for the photo shoot:

"[During the shoot] I had this one time where I had not had a mirror behind me and they put this mirror up behind when I was doing this shoot. I had this rocking black outfit on, formal outfit, and I kind of, from a distance, looked in the mirror and I felt, Oh, my God. That's the first time I'd ever really seen an image of me, of who I am. I mean over-the-top better than I thought it would ever be, especially at my age. You know, you think it's kind of over with at that age. And seeing that image was powerful to me, you know, powerful. And I kind of looked at it and said, You know what, this is going to work, we're going to be ok with this, you know. So yeah, we move forward. I am so excited about the future."

For the full interview, visit Vanity Fair's website. The issue hits stands June 9.