I know that for many people transition was something that /needed/ to be done in order to live a normal, healthy life. My friend (who shall remain nameless) said that when she was sixteen she talked about transitioning all the time to one of her close friends. After awhile said friend moved away and they lost contact for a long time. About eleven years later her friend turned up and began talking about all the dreams and aspirations that my friend had about what she was going to do during and after transition. Her friend asked what happened, and why she never went through with it.

My friend said that she basically felt like she'd been slapped in the face because time just slipped from under her, like she'd wasted a decade of her life being who she hated and she didn't even realize it. Within the next few months she was going through with HRT. That was her deciding factor.

So, my question to you Susan's, is what was your deciding factor? What made you get up one morning and say, "I need to start HRT." "I need to get on with my life; time's-a-wasting!"?

There are a lot of factors in making the decision I now have, but there are two videos on Youtube that really got the ball rolling for me.

About a month ago, I saw a video called "Spontaneous Me Lindsey Stirling. Just everything about her made me feel like I was watching myself (though obviously in a different body). Her clothing style is what I've always imagined I would have if I were a woman. Her interests seemed to be very similar as well. But I pretty much left it at that and watched her video a lot of times, just admiring her. (I have since also bought her music on iTunes, because she's so amazing)

Then what really was the decisive factor, was the Youtube channel "Jesslyngirl87". I stumbled upon her channel about a week ago through recommended videos for a guitar cover of a song she did. I thought "whoa, she's pretty good!" and decided to go to her channel page and look for more videos. What I saw on her channel, was that it was mainly a vlogging channel about her very own transition! My mind was blown because I never would have suspected that she wasn't a genetic woman, and it gave me real hope for me to go through with that as well. I proceeded to watch every single one of her videos overnight, and I just became more amazed as I went on. It took several hours of watching it, and I was very tired but ... so worth the time spent.

I started doing research into the subject and I just got more and more amazed at what all is possible. I had no idea about any of these things. I always thought that the only way to accomplish anything is surgery, and that it was impossible to change your voice at all, and most certainly nothing like achieving a female body type.

So long story short: Jesslyn is my inspiration for this journey, and Lindsey is the person I thrive to someday be like.

Well, to start off... I'm an androgyne, not a transgendered person. but I had a transition just recently so I'm posting here anyway

I just recently started binding after feeling like I had to for a bit, and it was set off by... my boyfriend. He's an FTM and just seeing how much more confident he was while he was binding made me want to try it. It wasn't a 'need to' thing until I actually started binding... and now I feel weird with my makeshift binder off.

So yeah.

--Kayden.

For me it was a lot of things, but one in particular was a really bad period. I always have bad ones, but this one had me blacking out in school, unable to stand up, and sleeping whenever I was home. I'm still anemic several weeks later. I just can't do it anymore. I can't spend another month sick and in pain because of organs I don't even identify with. I don't have to put up with it anymore. I'm done.

My deciding factors included a few things.  I guess the main one is the dysphoria itself, and regret about not coming out sooner.  I've wanted to transition since I was 11 or 12.  At 25 I feel like I can't afford to keep wasting time giving in to my fear.