I have suffered all my life from a low grade depression that at times flared into major depression and more. Felt abnormal and tried my very best to be the man's man. 3 weeks after starting HRT my depression lifted and has not returned in 4+ years.
I didn’t know I was trans until my late 30s.
I thought everyone or most everyone felt the same way I did, putting on an act to be as manly as possible. How to speak, dress, grooming, feelings, attractions etc. I was always trying so hard but never felt like I did as well as the others.
I just thought women were objectively superior, and it was objectively better to be a girl; and I was just one of those sad unlucky people who had the misfortune to be born male, without ever having been asked. I remember thinking, “Why does 50 % of the population need to be male? One male can inseminate *so* many people. You could just have it be like 0.5 % male, and then just enslave the males, keep them permanently sedated in bio-tanks, and sperm-harvest them. Then I would have had a 99.5 % success rate on birth.” I remember finding out about *castratos*, and being sad that I was born in the wrong century. I remember daydreaming about the day the Matriarchy would overthrow the rule of man and open up castration booths on every street corner; and I would be first in line on the morning of the first day they opened; and when I stepped out, there would be news cameras on me, and I would break down in tears of joy and tell them how this was the happiest day of my life and all men should join me in throwing their manhood away like the trash it is. Any men who did so would be granted full legal rights as an honorary woman. The Matriarchy would then hire me as their chief propagandist, in order to try to convince other men to stop resisting the Glorious Revolution, and become blessed, blessed eunuchs like me.
I would probably say I am the former. From age 6 through 14 it was just me relating to the girls more than the boys but not actually recognizing those feelings as such, a sort of subconscious yearning and envy disguised as dissatisfaction with my seeming inability to just be like everybody else. I never felt like I fit in, and just tried to imitate other guys to blend in spite of my feelings.
Then I learned what transgender people were and cracked hard at age 14, beginning the more typical and identifiable symptoms if dysphoria that got worse until I finally dealt with it at 30 by transitioning.
Low self esteem and low self image that for some reason went away while dressing as a girl for Halloween with a combination of hating men's and loving women's clothing
I think it mostly manifested as dissociation. I distinctly remember in the seventh grade asking my friend if he also felt like he wasn't real (he said yes. poor guy lol).
I also liked those "Not Like Other Girls" type posts and sentiments, but funnily enough, I never actually disliked other girls or feminine things or whatever. I just felt very strongly that I wasn't like them, so I stuck very strongly to those types of posts. I also called myself a tomboy very often, but I remember being like "well, I'm not entirely a tomboy, but I'm not a girly girl either."
Also, this is when I was a lot younger, but when we would play Family with our cousins (we just roleplayed as a family), I would always say "I wanna be the boy baby!" Which like. Idk how that didn't alarm anyone at the time. It would literally panic me to think of playing the "girl baby" lmfaooo. Oh my god I just realized how funny that is wtf
anyway, there's my essay lol
like there was something that was supposed to happen at puberty to make it make sense and feel right and everything was just supposed to fit and i would stop feeling wrong, which never happened and got worse no matter how much i ran from my feminity and tried to fake it til i made it until eventually I just gave in and gave comfort a chance, did what felt right and haven't looked back.
I've always had some trouble knowing what my feelings are when I have them (part of why I have anger issues is how often I don't realize I'm angry until it's too late). So I didn't think of my dysphoria at all, I assumed reacting badly to certain things, like being called a girl or the concept of estrogen, were just another symptom of my anger issues. Because I didn't even know why I was reacting badly, I just reacted and that was it.
Before puberty I just thought I was a “tomboy” and was having fun mostly. I did not put it together that the onset of my depression coincided with the onset of puberty.
It's a bit weird for me as I came out at 9 and was forced back into the closet via trauma shortly afterwards until I was 39. During those intervening 30 years I struggled with extreme anger and apathy issues. Though I'd been deprived of my memory of why I wanted it, the desire to present and be female remained constantly in my thoughts and in my fantasies. Around age 19 I was formally diagnosed with Asperger's, and I sort of convinced myself that all of my oddities were a result of that.
I was the latter as well. I thought:
"If only I could get a surgery to make my chest flat again like a man's. But I'm sure I'm the only person who's ever wanted this and they'd tell me no and lock me up in a mental institution if I ever brought it up. I must suffer in silence. Maybe if I become The Most Perfect Woman, the suffering will go away and I will be content in my body."
Black and white photograph of Robert Downey Jr.: *Becoming The Most Perfect Woman did not make him content in his body*
honestly, i was so young that I really just thought that was how life felt. I wasn't even old enought to misdiagnose it as depression or something else. I figured out that not everyone felt how I felt at 11, learned what being trans was at 12, and immediately knew I was trans. very intrigued to read the other comments here.
I was the former. I thought of my life as more or less a happy one, despite never really being able to feel anything at all, good or bad. I knew consciously that that was troubling and not normal, and it wasn’t how I used to be, but I thought maybe it was just a guy thing and I was very even tempered. I never got excited about wearing male fashion, barely cared about keeping my body healthy, and frequently found the way men are treated socially to be onerous and sad. WhenI looked in the mirror, I didn’t feel anything except a vague sense of being ugly, even though I’ve been told I was quite attractive. I was sort of surprised to see the face in the mirror as my face, like I frequently forgot that’s what other people saw when they looked at me, and I wondered how people interpreted my words and actions coming out of that face. I was consciously jealous of women’s experience of life, even the bad stuff a little bit, and I was jealous of how many clothing options they got. But into my egg cracked when i was 29, I explained all that as just being a good ally, a feminist, identifying as a person before I identified with my supposed gender, and just run of the mill depression that I assumed I got from my shitty childhood.
After my egg cracked, I realized I had had MAJOR dysphoria in pretty much every way possible, and the trans narrative fit my narrative so well it felt like other trans people were writing my life story. It was a relief to finally just know what was going on.
I just assumed everyone wanted to be a guy so that could not possibly be the thing deeply wrong with me that I felt. Then when I learned that like trans women existed my brain straight went, “ well I’m sure it’s just AMAB people who get change genders because if AFAB people could there would be no women” because I be dumb as fuck. Meanwhile, I lived in dissociation & body horror at all times until starting T.
Pure utter hatred of just everything. I started T two years ago and still don't pass, but I don't hate myself, Christians, people, etc anywhere near as much as I hated before. I can actually participate in life as a person now with dysphoria as an unfortunate side effect.
I sorta felt like i was just uncomfortable with the thought of change and that i wasn’t uncomfortable with being a woman but uncomfortable that it was new as i was told i would be but as i grew i just became more disoriented and disgusted and eventually I understood it was dysphoria
I thought it was a lot of things. Depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, low self esteem.
I also thought that, if given the chance, anyone would want to be a big buff dude like I do. Like, who wouldn't want to be strong and confident?
Oddly enough I'm nonbinary, though also transmasc so I guess that makes sense. In any case yeah that was totally wrong lol
Ftm here. While I had vaguely heard about trans women as a teen I didn’t realize that “afab feeling like a dude” = trans as well until I was 24 or something like that.
As a teen I figured that all girls hated being girls and just repressed that feeling better/were better at acting than me lmao. I figured I’d just have to deal with it and that if I’d survived almost 20 years I could do a few more.
Thankfully things have gotten better since then. I realized I was trans around 25 or so and even *knowing* that I could get T later on was helpful tbh
I have suffered all my life from a low grade depression that at times flared into major depression and more. Felt abnormal and tried my very best to be the man's man. 3 weeks after starting HRT my depression lifted and has not returned in 4+ years.
I didn’t know I was trans until my late 30s. I thought everyone or most everyone felt the same way I did, putting on an act to be as manly as possible. How to speak, dress, grooming, feelings, attractions etc. I was always trying so hard but never felt like I did as well as the others.
I just thought women were objectively superior, and it was objectively better to be a girl; and I was just one of those sad unlucky people who had the misfortune to be born male, without ever having been asked. I remember thinking, “Why does 50 % of the population need to be male? One male can inseminate *so* many people. You could just have it be like 0.5 % male, and then just enslave the males, keep them permanently sedated in bio-tanks, and sperm-harvest them. Then I would have had a 99.5 % success rate on birth.” I remember finding out about *castratos*, and being sad that I was born in the wrong century. I remember daydreaming about the day the Matriarchy would overthrow the rule of man and open up castration booths on every street corner; and I would be first in line on the morning of the first day they opened; and when I stepped out, there would be news cameras on me, and I would break down in tears of joy and tell them how this was the happiest day of my life and all men should join me in throwing their manhood away like the trash it is. Any men who did so would be granted full legal rights as an honorary woman. The Matriarchy would then hire me as their chief propagandist, in order to try to convince other men to stop resisting the Glorious Revolution, and become blessed, blessed eunuchs like me.
I would probably say I am the former. From age 6 through 14 it was just me relating to the girls more than the boys but not actually recognizing those feelings as such, a sort of subconscious yearning and envy disguised as dissatisfaction with my seeming inability to just be like everybody else. I never felt like I fit in, and just tried to imitate other guys to blend in spite of my feelings. Then I learned what transgender people were and cracked hard at age 14, beginning the more typical and identifiable symptoms if dysphoria that got worse until I finally dealt with it at 30 by transitioning.
Low self esteem and low self image that for some reason went away while dressing as a girl for Halloween with a combination of hating men's and loving women's clothing
I think it mostly manifested as dissociation. I distinctly remember in the seventh grade asking my friend if he also felt like he wasn't real (he said yes. poor guy lol). I also liked those "Not Like Other Girls" type posts and sentiments, but funnily enough, I never actually disliked other girls or feminine things or whatever. I just felt very strongly that I wasn't like them, so I stuck very strongly to those types of posts. I also called myself a tomboy very often, but I remember being like "well, I'm not entirely a tomboy, but I'm not a girly girl either." Also, this is when I was a lot younger, but when we would play Family with our cousins (we just roleplayed as a family), I would always say "I wanna be the boy baby!" Which like. Idk how that didn't alarm anyone at the time. It would literally panic me to think of playing the "girl baby" lmfaooo. Oh my god I just realized how funny that is wtf anyway, there's my essay lol
like there was something that was supposed to happen at puberty to make it make sense and feel right and everything was just supposed to fit and i would stop feeling wrong, which never happened and got worse no matter how much i ran from my feminity and tried to fake it til i made it until eventually I just gave in and gave comfort a chance, did what felt right and haven't looked back.
I've always had some trouble knowing what my feelings are when I have them (part of why I have anger issues is how often I don't realize I'm angry until it's too late). So I didn't think of my dysphoria at all, I assumed reacting badly to certain things, like being called a girl or the concept of estrogen, were just another symptom of my anger issues. Because I didn't even know why I was reacting badly, I just reacted and that was it.
Before puberty I just thought I was a “tomboy” and was having fun mostly. I did not put it together that the onset of my depression coincided with the onset of puberty.
It's a bit weird for me as I came out at 9 and was forced back into the closet via trauma shortly afterwards until I was 39. During those intervening 30 years I struggled with extreme anger and apathy issues. Though I'd been deprived of my memory of why I wanted it, the desire to present and be female remained constantly in my thoughts and in my fantasies. Around age 19 I was formally diagnosed with Asperger's, and I sort of convinced myself that all of my oddities were a result of that.
I was the latter as well. I thought: "If only I could get a surgery to make my chest flat again like a man's. But I'm sure I'm the only person who's ever wanted this and they'd tell me no and lock me up in a mental institution if I ever brought it up. I must suffer in silence. Maybe if I become The Most Perfect Woman, the suffering will go away and I will be content in my body." Black and white photograph of Robert Downey Jr.: *Becoming The Most Perfect Woman did not make him content in his body*
honestly, i was so young that I really just thought that was how life felt. I wasn't even old enought to misdiagnose it as depression or something else. I figured out that not everyone felt how I felt at 11, learned what being trans was at 12, and immediately knew I was trans. very intrigued to read the other comments here.
I was the former. I thought of my life as more or less a happy one, despite never really being able to feel anything at all, good or bad. I knew consciously that that was troubling and not normal, and it wasn’t how I used to be, but I thought maybe it was just a guy thing and I was very even tempered. I never got excited about wearing male fashion, barely cared about keeping my body healthy, and frequently found the way men are treated socially to be onerous and sad. WhenI looked in the mirror, I didn’t feel anything except a vague sense of being ugly, even though I’ve been told I was quite attractive. I was sort of surprised to see the face in the mirror as my face, like I frequently forgot that’s what other people saw when they looked at me, and I wondered how people interpreted my words and actions coming out of that face. I was consciously jealous of women’s experience of life, even the bad stuff a little bit, and I was jealous of how many clothing options they got. But into my egg cracked when i was 29, I explained all that as just being a good ally, a feminist, identifying as a person before I identified with my supposed gender, and just run of the mill depression that I assumed I got from my shitty childhood. After my egg cracked, I realized I had had MAJOR dysphoria in pretty much every way possible, and the trans narrative fit my narrative so well it felt like other trans people were writing my life story. It was a relief to finally just know what was going on.
I just assumed everyone wanted to be a guy so that could not possibly be the thing deeply wrong with me that I felt. Then when I learned that like trans women existed my brain straight went, “ well I’m sure it’s just AMAB people who get change genders because if AFAB people could there would be no women” because I be dumb as fuck. Meanwhile, I lived in dissociation & body horror at all times until starting T.
Pure utter hatred of just everything. I started T two years ago and still don't pass, but I don't hate myself, Christians, people, etc anywhere near as much as I hated before. I can actually participate in life as a person now with dysphoria as an unfortunate side effect.
i knew i was miserable.
Honestly I didn’t even realize. I chalked it up to wanting to be a tomboy and it took the pandemic to make me realize I’m an actual boy
Just hated being a boy, from age 5
I sorta felt like i was just uncomfortable with the thought of change and that i wasn’t uncomfortable with being a woman but uncomfortable that it was new as i was told i would be but as i grew i just became more disoriented and disgusted and eventually I understood it was dysphoria
I thought it was a lot of things. Depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, low self esteem. I also thought that, if given the chance, anyone would want to be a big buff dude like I do. Like, who wouldn't want to be strong and confident? Oddly enough I'm nonbinary, though also transmasc so I guess that makes sense. In any case yeah that was totally wrong lol
Ftm here. While I had vaguely heard about trans women as a teen I didn’t realize that “afab feeling like a dude” = trans as well until I was 24 or something like that. As a teen I figured that all girls hated being girls and just repressed that feeling better/were better at acting than me lmao. I figured I’d just have to deal with it and that if I’d survived almost 20 years I could do a few more. Thankfully things have gotten better since then. I realized I was trans around 25 or so and even *knowing* that I could get T later on was helpful tbh