I've thought similarly too. I spent the better part of the past 10 years trying to pass as a man in my ftm transition, and into the 5th year of it, I finally reached that goal. And I passed well for 4 years... until I came to the realisation that I had been traveling life on the wrong train, and made the decision to detransition.
After 9 years of having lived as a man, I did not expect how hard it would be to start living as a woman again. It hit me hard, and felt like a mountain smacked me in the face. Cause I had put in so much effort, and during so many years... just to regret it? It felt like the cruelest fate, and hardest lesson I've ever had to learn. I had even voice trained additionally to taking T so that I could get my voice as close to "cis male sounding" as possible, I changed my mannerisms, learned how to trim my beard, spent years changing the way I walk and finding the best ways of dressing masculine to hide wide hips. But yes, I had been performing an act without even knowing it. Thought I was just alleviating dysphoria. But the solution I had reached for created more problems for me than it alleviated.
But ultimately my detransition is for me more about connecting with bio sex and really just loving being a woman, than it is about my looks or what I do medically to regain what I've lost. Just going off T did a tremenduous difference in finding back to my stuffed away, inner womanhood. It is much more psychological than it is physical.
Medically, the only thing I want to get from now on is new boobs, which won't help with my passing at all. I want them for my own personal comfort, in private, and possibly with a girlfriend, but I don't want them for passing. And I don't even care what they'll look like.
But I'm not here to promote for detransition, cause it kinda sucks anyhow, so I don't recommend it. It devastated and terrified me, so in my early detransition I again felt like "now I have to instead try to pass a female again!" while I just kept seeing a man in the mirror. A man with female genitals and wide hips, but still. I think I look male in the face unless I cake on makeup, thanks to T and my genetics that just made my face naturally androgynous. And my lack of boobs makes clothing difficult, either which way.
I've now been detransing for 9 months and I don't try to pass anymore. It was when I reached the point of nearly throwing my makeup and shaving tools against a wall and screaming at them, but still couldn't figure out if I wanted to keep or remove my facial hair, that I needed to find a better approach. I stopped covering my beard shadow, and on some days I don't even shave my face. I don't hide my hairline anymore, and I don't change the way my voice now "naturally" sounds since having been on T, which is for the past 8 years (long enough for it to feel natural to me, but of course is actually medically modified).
I know I don't look like a woman (except from in pics, for whatever reason), but I still am one. I know I don't pass, although most people avoid gendering me at all, so I rarely get referred to with any or either pronouns. I notice by how they act around me and more subtle things than pronouns. I notice by how they say my very common female name slowly and awkwardly. I notice by how they call me a woman in a noticably forced way. I notice by how other women distance themselves from me like they never used to before my transition, and by how men still expect me to somehow relate to their ways of thinking. I live in a safe area so I can do this without fearing for my well-being. I often think I actually look a little like as if I was a trans woman in early transition, and that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
A few times back in my transition, I thought to myself if I would have been happier if I had been born male, but the damn thought that always came up in my head as a reply to that was that I would probably have been a trans woman then. Finally I understand why I kept getting that thought. I didn't mean it literally. It was a metaphor for my detransition, that I at heart always felt like a woman, even when I hated it the most.
I love my beard, and I can't leave my bed without my boobs. Passing for me now, is nothing but a utopian pipe dream, which could only happen in a society in which I'd be perceived as female regardless of my looks and voice. But it's also become far less important to me. Just knowing who/what I am myself, having my style, and embracing my traits that I like about my body, both the female and the male ones, and living my life to the fullest and trying my best to not be hindered by my body, is what matters the most to me.
Then people can think I'm a man if that's what they see. It's not an insult, it's not an actually bad thing to be male, even though I too have come to understand just how much lesser people think of me when they mistake me for a trans woman. It doesn't say anything about my actual value, as a person or as a woman. And I say all of that as a cis woman who is non-passing, more or less by choice.
