For me, there's a few aspects of my dysphoria that seem to stick out
1 - the idea that subconsciously, other people see things about me that I don't. I have memories stemming back to my early childhood of either having to be told (usually by my father) that something I was doing as not "like a boy", or my peers and others telling me that I did things "like a girl". That I sounded like a girl because my voice was naturally high, and having my dad try to downplay that by claiming I was an "irish tenor" even when I was an alto until high school, when my voice finally dropped... barely. People are always calling me "ma'am" on the phone, friends pulling me aside asking me if I'm gay because I apparently give off a "gay vibe"... which I guess might be true if I was living as a woman, but not so much when I'm born and allegedly supposed to be a guy.
2 - the fact that I have this birth defect that affects my urinary tract. Like maybe there was a mistake in the womb, and I wasn't supposed to develop this way. Having repeated surgeries every few just to be able to piss regularly, it messes with my head.
3 - this lingering feeling that I didn't belong in the boys' room, so to speak. Masculinity itself just seems to foreign to me. I admit, having lived in this role for 30 some odd years, I picked up some of the tricks of the trade. But it still doesn't feel natural. Add to that bits from my first point, abut how others seemingly saw things about me that I didn't, and that for the first half of my life, essentially, I was made to feel completely unwelcome in boys' locker rooms. So I don't even want to be here, exposing myself to people with no respect for privacy whatsoever, and all I get is that feeling doubled down on and confirmed at every turn. I can't even go into a stall to use the bathroom by myself without someone kicking in a door until well into my 20s without having to plan an entire day around being able to get to a bathroom where no one else would be.
4 - I've seemed to care more about women's rights, gay rights, and trans rights than a person that didn't have a personal stake in any of those ideas ought to. Like these forms of discrimination affected me personally, because... they do, apparently. I didn't take up these fights because I felt someone else was being wronged. I took it up because I felt personally insulted by the very concept of these forms of oppression. Maybe because I can look back in hindsight and realize that a lot of the locker room and bathroom harassment I dealt with in school stemmed from a similar premise, this idea that your body doesn't belong to you. That you're just here to serve someone else's needs and desires, either sexually or otherwise.
5 - the fact that so many, especially my dad, seemed to work so hard in order to remind me, almost daily, that I was a boy. as if I wasn't taking to it naturally. Given, this goes back to that first point of other people seeing things about me that I didn't, but I kind of feel this sticks out because it feels like there was this intentional campaign to assure me of this identity that I clearly wasn't comfortable in. Like I actually had to be taught how to be a boy because I didn't have the instinct. And it would be little things. The way I'd talk. The way I'd wave to friends. Being told to go around without a shirt despite feeling gorribly uncomfortable that way. Being told to walk off otherwise serious injuries, like a broken arm, because that's what "men" do. Nevermind being encouraged to play tackle football with teenagers at 6 years old because your dad says you need to be more like the other boys, which is how your arm got broken in the first place. So either my dad was just really macho for some reason... and he was. But maybe he felt he needed to be because his son felt more like a daughter. Not trying to excuse it, more just trying to understand it.
Sadly, abuse has played a role in my dysphoria, but only more to exacerbate it and make it worse. So I repressed it. As much as I could for as long as I could. And over the last year, I've had this Pandora's Box open back up and realize just how much I've let this fester over the years. How much I've talked myself out of this, doing everyone else's work for me to convince myself, "yeah, they're right, I'm really a boy. I have the parts, right? So I must be." Except, the parts don't always work right, and the role never feels right. I hate my name. I hate the distance there is between me and female friends because of body parts that tell them that our friendship can only be superficial, at best. I hate that I spent the past year agonizing over whether anyone would even begin to accept me as a trans woman because I'm still romantically and sexually attracted to other women. I hate that I spent so much of my life being told I was this thing I'm not, only to spent the other half of it trying to convince myself that they were right. I hate all this body hair I have, this penis that can't piss right half the time and keeps having to be worked on every couple years because my urehtra closes up, the fact that I don't know who I can trust because of the so many ways I've been screwed over by those who claim to love me the most. I hate being used, this feeling that my body's not even my own, that other people feel they have a right over it even when I play by their stupid rules. I hate that I can't just be seen as the girl I am without risking everything I have, and that I have no idea if coming out will even pay off. What if I go through all of this and still end up old and alone and miserable?
I hate that I couldn't have been Daria all along.
