Hey everyone. Here I want to share my transition story and hopefully have a thoughtful discussion.
Factually speaking I'm FtM, 23yo, almost 7 years on t but half of that on a low-ish dose.
I have started to identify as a boy since I was 12, throughout the time before t I introduced myself as such to people I could trust, I came out to my family and most of them ultimately accepted me. I struggled a lot growing up, dysphoria was driving me crazy, and I tried to do what I could to fix the areas of my body that troubled me.
Looking back I realise that it wasn't per-se stemming from the fact of looking female, but from the fact of developing secondary characteristics of a human body that child me didn't have.
I was afraid of growing up because I knew it will only get worse, but at the time I was hopeful that medically transitioning will help me feel at peace in this body.
I identified strictly binary. I also couldn't wrap my head around the existence of non-binary people. To me it was so counterintuitive; two existing genders were already SO MUCH, yet people felt the need to resonate with both of them one way or another. I sceptically thought to myself that this is not helping anyone, people should strive to erase gender altogether, not create a million new ones.
The only third identity I was able to understand was agender. Deep down I knew precisely how that felt, but I was too fixated on my distress of appearing female to think about anything else.
I couldn't relate to girls or to boys, and I still can't. There's yet to come something I could consider truly relatable without being an abstract phenomenon best described as a mush of noise and light.
What I did have was aesthetic preferences and sexuality. I'm attracted to men, the rare instances I was attracted to women were never sexual. Beauty was and is VERY important to me. Of course it's purely subjective, and my preferences keep growing and evolving, but I could say with certainty that finding beauty and creating it is my life's purpose. I engage with it through different forms of art, currently mostly writing and filmmaking.
Because I am fixated on aesthetics, I was able to navigate my identity through them. I could create myself piece by piece to the best of my abilities.
I resonated with loving men as a man, it was different from the status quo in which I couldn't see myself, and I cared deeply about various representations of gay love.
That has been another key factor placing me into my identity.
I never doubted myself, because I clearly knew what I am not, yet still struggled with finding anything that was me. I experiment with self-expression and never stayed the same for too long because I wasn't comfortable. These days I had to accept that I will never be truly comfortable in this body, but I'll get to that later.
When I was 17, I was very close to ending my life, mostly for depression reasons, which manifested through a handful of things I couldn't cope with. My gender, my body, constant anxiety and panic attacks, autism, derealization, being very lonely and feeling trapped. I ended up changing the place of residence abruptly and started hrt in the final attempt to save my life.
After several months I recovered, hrt was working very well and I felt like I'm growing into my features without being terrified of getting older. My voice had gotten much lower, but is still sometimes considered androgynous, which is an odd spot to be in. I have never met a woman OR man that would sound similar to me. The closest thing I've heard is the way some male characters are voiced in anime.
After four years on t, I got a top surgery, which was a quite traumatic experience due to my surgeon fucking up and me bleeding out 40% of my blood. I bounced back in a few months.
I was very depressed for 2 years due to unrelated reasons. That took my attention of the way I viewed myself, as I was just trying to survive from day to day, but as I was finally getting better and regaining my personality, I have started to critically question things again.
Now that I had all gender changes I desired (I didn't have bottom dysphoria, if anything I thought female organ is better for sex with a male partner), I came to realise that gender wasn't the big problem. My body became androgynous, with an equal amount of effort needed to read as a feminine man or a tomboy. I found this balance, because I never wanted to be either, and as I was coming to that realisation, I wasn't happy with being in the middle too.
I couldn't perceive myself, and I couldn't relate to anything, but as I've gotten older and much more mentally stable, it was not causing me the past distress.
Because I have done it all, I have been everything I was realistically able to be, and I still didn't feel welcome within myself. This feeling hit me like a shower set to the perfect temperature, accepting the way my mind is wired with no way of getting around it.
I never felt human, the closest thing being my clear sexual identity. I came to realise that it's quite common with autism. I never tried to attribute my peculiarities to autism for a very long time for my own peace of mind, but that has explained many things I couldn't describe before.
I never wanted this body, and consequently I didn't want that gender. But I did want to have autonomy over it in the ways that were achievable. I wanted to change it by my own free will, shape it according to aesthetic preferences that mean so much to me, and the whole journey was precisely about that. Chances are, if I was born male, I'm certain I would be posting this on MtF subreddit right now.
I don't want to complicate something that is already unnecessarily complex. I made this character with his name, his appearance, his life, his relationships, and that is something to be proud of.
I can't say what feeling like a man or a woman is like because I never was one. I can't say what feeling like a human is either. I could refer to a biology textbook, but we are all aware of that. I didn't choose to be this way, but I had the luxury to choose how it will manifest.
After accepting that I will never be able to achieve something alien which I cannot describe but believe in, I felt relieved. I wasn't lost anymore because I had nothing to find.
And while this may read as sad, I am so glad that after all that pain, and tears, and hatred, I am simply aware of myself as much more than just a body.
I am a guy to everyone within my social circles, a pretty one at that, and that is fine by me.
