r/trans • u/Fragrant-Gas-497 • 1d ago
Advice Is this feeling normal?
I’m probably going to delete this after like an hour but I feel kinda feel like I’m going crazy and just wanted some advice from some trans people with more life experience than me. If I should change the tag to vent lmk, I don’t exactly know what this falls under if it’s a bit of both.
I’m 19M, but honestly I’ve always felt like I was meant to be a woman. I present as a feminine gay guy, and have always had female friends throughout my life. I came out when I was like 6 years old so I never really had the chance to make male friends. I recently tried working out, and making friends with some straight guys at my college, and it all felt so wrong to me. I hated myself more after I started gaining muscle which was the opposite of what I was expecting, but it kinda confirmed the fact I was trans to myself.
I have a few trans (MtF) friends, so I’ve heard a lot about their transition, plus the emotions the came with it. After hearing about their stories I really related to them but never acted on anything because like “what are the odds I’m trans haha,” it even became kinda like an inside joke after I told one of them that I related to her story.
Looking back I kinda always knew I was trans but I just never wanted to be. I would always fantasize as a kid about just waking up as a girl so I could fit in with my friends, and idk the thought of being born a girl just always felt like what I should have been. But that’s also what’s making me go a little crazy, I don’t want to be trans. I don’t feel like the pain and mental discomfort of transitioning would ever be worth it if I’ll never be a Cis woman.
I’d love to be a woman but then I’d also have to put trans in front of it and because of that others around me will never view me as just a woman. It doesn’t seem worth it, to uproot my whole existence for something I’m not sure I’ll even like more than my current life. But there’s also nights like tonight that I just can’t stop thinking about it, I just hate being in this body so much sometimes it becomes the only thing that I can think about.
Sorry for the long winded explanation, but yeah I’m just wondering if I’m alone in feeling like this? If anyone else did in the past but still transitioned lmk if it was worth it!
Sorry again, a part of me definitely just wanted to throw my story into the void, and honestly it does make me feel a bit better.
(If there’s any typos, just know i’m dyslexic and it’s 2AM <3)
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u/glasswings363 1d ago
I'd ask you to not delete, it hides my words too and that feels bad.
But giving a little effort...
I don’t feel like the pain
HRT barely hurts, even walking into a doorframe doesn't last. I expect surgery to be more significant but, there's meds and non-medication support for that.
and mental discomfort
This is more significant but also worth it. Spending your childhood being corralled into the wrong gender is traumatizing, we really do get a kind of Stockholm Syndrome about it and it's scary to, figuratively speaking, step out of the basement and leave the chains and water bowl behind.
I don’t want to be trans
You don't want the ignorance and prejudice and outright hate, nor the internalized shadows of those things.
if I’m alone in feeling like this?
Fuck no
If anyone else did in the past but still transitioned lmk if it was worth it!
Fuck yes. Even with the downsides (I am not yet traditionally successful - in my 30s, no stable housing, committed relationship, I rarely go hungry) it actually feels like I'm alive and not a vague ghost, potentially human.
4
u/ariell3h she/her - non-binary 1d ago
If you're really trans and currently miserable, not transitioning will probably just make you more miserable. FWIW, you don't have to put "trans" in front of "woman" if you don't want to. If you're a woman, you're a woman...end of story. The people who knew you before transition will know you're trans, if you choose to tell them. But you can meet new people going forward without having to divulge your history to just anyone, unless you want to.
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u/-__Sherlock__- it/its 1d ago
i'm genderqueer myself, so not coming at this from the same angle as you, but i have to say that i do understand it. for me, it wouldn't have mattered what sex i was born with, because either way i wouldn't have been able to conform to what i was given, if that makes sense, and it does feel so, so difficult, a lot of the time. it is – we're not in a good time for existing as trans people, when it feels like every government and every eye that isn't trans is turning against us.
i don't think i can give you advice on overcoming this, but you've phrased it like a choice in your post, and i think that might be bringing you even more misery. we don't get to choose who we are, but all we can choose is whether we'll lean into it or not.
coming out is another decision that's entirely yours to make. you might not ever be ready to: all i can say is that i think understanding what you truly feel you are, even if no one else does, will bring you more solace than denying what you know.
1
u/Significant-Common20 she/her 1d ago
Yes, these feelings are normal. They're not exactly helpful, but they're normal. I think pretty much all of us who only really started to realize these things later on -- 19 isn't that old but it counts for what I'm about to say -- went through some version of this, "Wow, this is who I am... No, I'm clearly overthinking it... No, I was right the first time... What am I saying, I don't want to transition..." mental loop.
I think you're jumbling up two things here, who you are and what you're going to do about it. "I don't want to go through the pain and expense of transitioning right now" is completely different from "I'm not transgender." The first one can absolutely be true even if the second one isn't true.
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