What do people mean when they say living in the wrong gender was killing them?

[Kellam]

I have ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel condition that has autoimmune roots. It gets worse with stress. It apeared over the last five years and was just getting worse and worse. By the end I would be in pain for a week after a month of work. After a month of having to be male and social around a dozen people. Last summer as I was aproaching transition, the more I admitted to myself, the more I had to hold in. I ended up out of work for a week and a half unable to leave the house, bleeding internally. I was in agony, went to the er and began the process of trying to get better. That's when I found out about the stress component and that gave me the strength to admit to myself that I was not male. Things started getting better. And now I am on pills for life that keep the colitis at bay. And even better pills for life that keep me from ever having to live in the closet again.

[Promethea]

For me it wasn't so much killing me as it had killed me long ago. I wasn't living my life, I wasn't true to myself. I was living a life other people wanted me to live and failing at that, achieving nothing of significance (to me). I was not living. I was a walking dead. Walking into a grocery store or walking onto the railroad tracks had the same significance. Suicide was a very real possibility that I could have chosen any day.

[Curious]

I think I died the moment I was born. I lack a full existence.

[Northern Jane]

I knew I was NOT my assigned gender early in childhood and it was very confusing and frustrating because nobody know about transsexualism in the 1950s and I was being told I was delusional and that I was mentally ill for feeling that I was or should have been a girl despite my body's superficial appearance.

By puberty, I did NOT want to go through a male puberty and began actively protesting and arguing. I wanted to go out with boys and live a normal girl's life but that wasn't allowed (though I did some of it on the QT). By my later  teens, all my girlfriends were seriously involved with boys and moving toward marriage and having a family while I was stuck in no man's land. Life was moving on and leaving me behind and I became more and more depressed.

I started hormones at 17 but SRS wasn't available then and 'transition' wasn't possible without SRS. I was still left behind and the depression grew worse and worse. Life was moving on for everyone else but I was stuck. By my early 20s I had attempted suicide a number of times and told my doctor, at age 24, that I didn't expect to live to be 25. Fortunately, SRS suddenly became possible (thanks to Dr. Biber's generosity) and I had surgery 3 months before my 25th birthday.

I simply didn't fit in my assigned role and life became more and it was VERY hard to see others moving on with life while I couldn't.