This is something I put up on Facebook the other day. I really wrote it to answer some questions for myself, but if anyone else is curious, here it is. Transition is on my mind, I'm definitely not going back and lately all I can think about is moving forward. This is not a "what if" anymore. It's a certain "when." Some of the stuff I talk about here is emotionally heavy and maybe a little disturbing, but working through these feelings is part of the process.
How do I know I'm transgender?
While living as a female, I used to be completely uncomfortable in my own skin. I couldn't really pin down why, and didn't know transition was possible at the time. In my early teenage years I used to wear huge, baggy clothes to hide myself, never wore bras, makeup, or anything that showed off my femininity. When I was around sixteen I started to wonder if the reason I didn't like myself as a female was because I wasn't trying hard enough. I switched to dresses and girly tops, started wearing makeup every day, and made more of an effort to get guy's attention. This wasn't what I needed though, it only made me feel worse and I started going downhill mentally. I cried nearly every day and sincerely wanted to die. After a while, this and other events in my life at the time drove me to leave my home town and start over.
By now I had begun researching the transition process, and when I moved I started changing my image. I wasn't ready to accept myself as trans right away. I cut my hair short, but it was still in a girlish style; I thought, maybe I can't be extremely feminine, but that doesn't mean I can't be a gender nonconforming female. However now that I knew it was possible to transition, it was all I could think about. I learned that the feelings I've always had were something that I wasn't alone in, that they had a name and there was a solution. Even still, I wasn't ready to admit it. I remember thinking that even though I was probably transgender, I could hide it, live as a masculine woman, and not have to deal with the expensive process and possibility of being rejected by my friends and family. However, knowing what was possible and denying myself sent my emotional state to an all time low. I didn't want to talk to anyone, leave the house, or do anything. I could no longer cry and started to hurt myself.
I came to the conclusion that I needed to stop denying who I truly was before it killed me. I told my family what I was feeling, as well as friends who I thought would understand. That was around eight months ago, and the change in my emotional state between then and now has been amazing. I feel like I have a reason to live now. Most of all I feel like I'm being ME now, not hiding behind an image of what I thought I should be. Part of what made accepting myself difficult was reconciling my feelings of wanting a male body with my enjoyment of some stereotypically feminine things. But I now understand that gender roles and stereotypes have little or nothing to do with actual gender, and that it is perfectly OK to be a boy who wears eyeliner. I understand now that my issues with femininity were not with the garments and expected roles themselves, but just with the fact that my body was female. Knowing this, I feel confident about wanting to transition.
What do I want/expect transition to do for me?
First of all, I know that hormones and surgery won't "make me a man." I will always be transgender, and my body will never be exactly like what I feel I should have been born with. Knowing this kind of bums me out, especially when I look at lower surgery results; they just don't look like the real thing and don't function the same way. However I strongly feel like it will be worth it for me to take testosterone. When I look at my body in its current state, I really feel like there's something wrong with it; I don't think "born in the wrong body" accurately describes the feeling though. I know that this body is mine, but it feels deformed. This is hard to explain, but it's like I have to force myself to see that my hips and chest are actually part of me, as if they had just grown suddenly in the last five minutes and I'm seeing them for the first time. I know that they're there, but I can't get used to them. On top of that, I'm tired of looking like a thirteen year old boy. I know that testosterone can change these things for me. I want the physical changes, both to make myself comfortable in my own skin and so that the rest of the world will see me as the person I see myself as. There are many transition logs on YouTube and other sites, and seeing these gives me hope. They're proof that change is possible, and that the state I'm currently in is only temporary.
