Hi all, so I'm new here and I'll go by J for now. My gender, for the past few months, has become more and more of an issue in my life. I apologise for a long post, but I hope maybe someone can give some advice. Thank you in advance.
I won't tell my entire life story, but for almost all of my adolescent life, I had few thoughts or clues about my gender. But then... I don't recall exactly how I started questioning my gender but it became more of something in my mind and life. I tried binding one day and seeing myself with a flat chest gave me a wave of euphoria and I knew something was up. I explored a lot (gender expression wise, body wise), I thought about gender consistently for weeks and weeks. And here I am now.
Anyways. I have quite a few 'hints' that I might be a trans man. As I've begun to explore my gender I've become quite jealous of cis men's looks and bodies. I've always related far more to male characters, now I can get quite envious of their looks too.
I consistently bind when I go out/hide my chest, have realised that I'm uncomfortable for my chest to be visible in public. I sometimes pack, but that's mainly for myself at home.
Thinking about growing up and being a woman for the rest of my life doesn't feel right. Some days I just want to be a man.
I've always been uncomfortable in very "stereotypically" feminine clothing, most of my life I lived in a more gender neutral environment, and would dress in quite an androgynous way. Maybe that's what made my adolescent life not as dysphoric as it could have been.
My dysphoria fluctuates, but there are days I really wish I had a male body.
I don't know who/what I saw in the mirror before I started questioning my gender, but now when I look in the mirror I just see a male body (if that makes sense). Or I see how I would look like with a male body. Now that that has 'clicked' in my mind I can't let that image and perception go.
There are many more 'hints' too...some days I just feel intrinsically like this is who I am, and how I would want to be in the future.
However I have many doubts too.
Like I said, I had almost 0 hints about my gender growing up. I was just who I was raised to be, who I was expected to be and it was fine, I'm unsure why things are surfacing now.
I dress very masculine now, with short hair, but some days I still miss my "girl" days. Looking at old videos and photos I sometimes feel the desire to go back to those times, hoping it might just work out. Maybe I miss when things were simpler, or maybe there is still a female aspect of me I can turn back to. I don't know. I keep trying to see if it would fit if I go back to who I was, but I feel conflicted.
Calling myself boy or a man feels weird. Maybe because I'm not used to it, or maybe because it's not who I am. Who knows.
Some days I still feel like there might be a "girl" part of me that's still there; just inklings of a doubt. It may just be something I'm clinging onto or having socialised and been raised as one, or maybe that's genuinely a part of my gender, a little bit of female that surfaces sometimes.
I don't feel clearly male all the time. Some days I'm just me, and I don't exactly feel like anything, though I wonder how to even articulate feeling like a gender (I just know sometimes I feel more male than others. Some days I feel quite apathetic and distant - it all fluctuates).
My dysphoria isn't so bad. It fluctuates too but most of the time it's bearable (or even unnoticable), and I'm alright. (Though there are bad days too.)
I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts. I'm quite conflicted at the moment and have been wondering if I am a trans man or if I'm nonbinary. I know I am not a cis woman, but apart from that I know very little. Are there any other ways I can experiment with my gender, or any questions I can ask myself/think about? Thank you.
