Hello everybody!
So, I'm kinda new to this non-binary thing. I've been having doubts about my identity for 4 years. I'll try to sum up my story so that you can tell me what you think.
I was born male (XY) and never had a single thought about "gender" until I was 22. I felt comfortable in male clothes. I liked girls. I was a boy, that was a fact. Not a single hint.
Looking back it all seems so weird, how suddenly it happened.
I always thought that I was different from the others. I couldn't have said in which way, just different. The other boys were not like me. We had some things in common, but not many. When puberty came I was grossed by the way they lusted after girls but I was much more disgusted by the fact that I shared some of their feelings.
By the time I was 16 I began suffering from eating disorders (bulimia nervosa mostly) and a severe depression. At 22 I decided to try some medications. They worked well for my bulimia but they left me even more depressed. Hitting rock bottom.
I kept thinking about why I felt so miserable.
I had long known that my illness was rooted in my sexuality, since it was after an orgasm that I felt the need to binge & purge. My libido made me feel dirty and disgusting. I never saw sex as a good thing or a happy thing. It was just this terrible urge that had to be satisfied.
So, sex was the root of it all. But how?
I don't remember how it happened. I just thought: "I'm a lesbian trapped inside a man's body". Like, out of nowhere. Yes, I had a thing for lesbian girls but I thought that was normal for a guy.
It was just then that I realized I wanted to be one. I didn't want to be a guy.
For a long time I wasn't able to understand how such a thing could be possible. I felt I couldn't talk to anybody about it: it was just too weird. But accepting the fact that I was a lesbian drove all the discomfort with sex away. It made what all the medicines couldn't do: make me feel good about myself.
Eventually I started to research into transexualism. But that didn't feel totally right either. I mean, since I wanted to transition I was a MtF. I started attending transgender spaces and got to know quite a few of them (and fell in love with one).
I wasn't like them and I knew it. I didn't want to be a super-femme. I didn't have the slightest interest for makeup, high heels, handbags, all those things that they were so fond of.
But I wanted the HRT and the SRS anyway. I went to a gender clinic, asking them to help me understand. I attended the sessions in my regular clothes and I was 100% sincere on my feelings. I was crystal clear that I just wanted to change my body, not my attire. I was denied hormones.
The psychologist said I had some dysphoria, but she thought it was a result of depression, I was not a woman. I don't blame her because I understand her point: I was just too different from the other MtFs. They don't have time to consider anything that is ambiguous.
I gave it all up for a couple of months or so. But the thought kept coming back. I was still very confused. The thing that bothered me most was that everything had happened in the wrong order: I didn't realize that I was 1) a girl & 2) a lesbian. I had realized I was a lesbian first, and then I had just thought that I had to be a girl. That's not how it's supposed to work. That really drove me nut, and it still does.
After being denied HRT, it took me 2 years to really try again. The question "Do you feel like a woman?" stopped me every time. All I could answer was "I don't feel like a man".
Then I started to realize how this "man/woman" thing was really just nonsense. What does it mean "to feel like a woman"? Do all cis women feel the same? Does Pamela Anderson feel like a woman the same way K.D. Lang does?
I am something that's probably in between, leaning more on the feminine side. Like a tomboy, or a soft butch. Could that be the reason why I never experienced dysphoria before 22?
Now I know what I want, and the rest doesn't matter.
I want my body to be feminine (but not too much). I want to make love as a girl, to a girl.
I want to be perceived as a girl, even if a more masculine one (I always despised the fact that I was perceived as a boy by girls, but I couldn't figure out why).
I'm still not comfortable enough to talk about my identity in real life, except with a few friends. Maybe that will change when I'll be on HRT (hopefully by february 2016). The new therapist thought I was an aspiring FtM when she saw me. I took it as a compliment. I just hope it's not going to stop me from getting my estrogens.
To the ones who endured the reading, thank you.
P.S. Sorry if there's any mistake, English is not my first language.
