2nd of March

Day 2: Talk about your process of discovery and realization. How did you come to understand yourself to be trans?

[Content warning: Dysphoria, Depression, Suicide]

My process of discovery is quite nonlinear. I guess the first time I really realized something wasn’t right, was when I realized puberty would be happening to me soon. I now know that the label boy wasn’t a good fit either back then, but it didn’t clash enough for me to notice. But when I was told that puberty would turn me into a man, I began to realize that I didn’t want that.

However, I was convinced that there was nothing I could do, so I wished for some anomaly to spare me of puberty, but of course that didn’t happen. Puberty was hell, my body began changing, and I began hating my body. I didn’t entertain any thoughts of rather becoming a woman, because I believed that to be utterly impossible, and thus not worth wasting a thought on.

To survive, and due to bullying, I buried every single feminine impulse, and tried to be as masculine as possible. I was scared that the veneer would scratch, lest the truth would become visible, starting the bullying again.

Not long after I entered University, in the year 2000, I discovered something on the internet, the website of (as it was still mainly called back then) a transsexual woman. I was fascinated, and I began questioning my gender. There weren’t many resources back then, but I did find the laws concerning name change, and I found therapists guidelines.

Back then, according to what I read, I would have to be hyper-feminine to transition, turn up wearing a cute top and jeans, instead of a dress or skirt as well as a full face of makeup, and you’d risk your hormones being cut off. My interest in women and lack of interest in men would have also disqualified me back then, resulting in cutting off the hormones.

The worst thing though was the law concerning the name change. Back then it was still in two stages, the first you get to change your name, but not gender marker. To do that you’d have to be sterilized, and if you’re married, you’d have to get a divorce. You’re thinking of marrying again, well homosexual marriage wasn’t a thing back then, but to top it all off, the name change would revert immediately if you ever marry. For the second stage, the change of gender marker, you’d need to get gender reassignment surgery.

I was shocked by that, as well as the language used in therapy guidelines, which implied that this is a psychiatric illness, and that hormone therapy should only be used if the patient can’t be convinced that they are their gender assigned at birth, and suggested a stay in a psych ward, to observe if the patient really is persistent in their insistence on their gender, as an option.

Watching Ace Ventura in this questioning phase sealed my decision, this cannot be. I decided that I can’t possibly be trans, because the thought of those measures made me sick, and the literature agreed that since I’m interested in women, and didn’t seem to want to be a girl from early on, it was very unlikely I was trans. I took all those thoughts, and buried them deep, and thus generated a black hole that would frequently threaten to devour me in the years to come.

For nineteen years I was convinced I couldn’t possibly be trans. I looked at transition timelines from time to time, longing for this to happen to me, but thinking that I can never transition, because I’m not trans. I hovered on the join button for some of the trans communities I found over the years, but I didn’t want to intrude on a safe space, and after all, I couldn’t possibly be trans. I was fascinated by fantasies in which I became a woman, but I couldn’t be trans. I had dreams, totally benign dream, boring even, but in those dreams I was a woman, just doing everyday things. They where both incredibly happy, and nightmares. The nightmare part was waking up from them, and realizing there is still that familiar dude, who didn’t feel like me, looking back at me from the mirror.

In those nineteen years, I was on a quest to find out whats wrong with me, I found I was autistic, and with that knowledge reduced my masking, and greatly improved my mental health, I went from suicidal, only living because I continuously postponed my suicide, to merely depressed. I realized that those years in secondary school where actually very traumatic, and worked on processing those, and other traumatic events in my life.

Whatever I did, it did improve things, but the feeling of wrongness didn’t go away. Oh, I was happy here and there, and some things would let me forget about all that for a few hours, and I treasure those few memories of happiness, but they never lasted.

There was one more try to figure out things, in my mid 20s I began to wonder why puberty had not finished yet, I did some research and came to the conclusion I was stuck at Tanner Stage 3, I had sparse facial hair, my voice had never really dropped (but I had trained myself to speak in a low voice), and I had no adams-apple. Since I was sent to an endocrinologist on an unrelated matter, I decided to bring it up with him. He examined me, and tested my testosterone levels (which I found out later where low for my age, but within normal range for adult males). He laughed at me, and made fun of me suspecting low testosterone, and told me that I was fine, and shouldn’t bother doctors with baseless worries. I believed him back then.

Well, that experience prevented me from going to a doctor when my hormones went crazy soon after. At first it was only one cycle once or twice a year. Sadly I have no blood levels or anything to base my educated speculation on, since I was too scared to be laughed at.

A cycle began with my libido going through the roof, I assume during this time my testosterone levels spiked well out of normal range. After about two weeks, the libido would then drop to nothing, and I’d have two weeks of complete and total disinterest in anything sexual. I assume that this was testosterone being converted to estrogens, which my body could detect properly, and thus stopping testosterone production. At first things would return to normal after a cycle, after a few years I sometimes had two or three cycles one after another, and the year before I transitioned, I ping-ponged between the two states.

I was too scared that I’d be laughed at again, until this became bad enough that I was starting to have suicidal thoughts again. I was thinking of killing or castrating myself to end the hell I was stuck in. Luckily my GP realized how bad things where, and agreed to prescribe cyproterone acetate, at least temporarily, to get some relief.

I was prepared to feel bad without testosterone, I was prepared for the stuff to make me depressed, and to stop it again if that happened, but that didn’t happen, instead my, by then 25y old depression, started to fade. Happy moments colored my life happy for days, sadness faded on its own, and I began to feel.

I barely had any emotions before this, but as I deprived my body of testosterone, I began to feel for the first time since childhood. The only exceptions previously where during times of deep depression, so the only strong emotions I knew for over two decades where sadness, anxiety and despair. Suddenly when something nice happened, I was happy. Not the mildly happy, temporarily holding back depression I knew before, but genuine happiness that often lasted for days.

What I read and what I felt didn’t agree, I never felt better in decades than when I deprived my body of testosterone, and completely nuked my sexuality. I began to wonder, maybe I’m trans after all, but part of me was still insisting I couldn’t possibly be. I decided to ask, because where else would I find people who where born with a body that would grow to produce testosterone, but feel better when they removed that testosterone from the equation.

I wrote a post on r/asktransgender, and described my situation, asking if it’s possible that I’m trans. The answers mostly told me I’d have to figure out myself, but several gave me resources to look at, or keywords to search for. A few hours after posting I realized that the restrictive view of transgender people from the 2000s wasn’t current anymore. I learned about non-binary people and about agender people, and I realized that yes, there is no doubt about it, I am transgender.

So in the tail end of September 2019, within a few hours I went from assuming I’m cis, to accepting I’m trans, and realizing that I would need to transition, because the mere thought of going back to a testosterone dominated hormone system felt like going to execution. I started off by calling myself non-binary and agender, and began exploring my gender. It didn’t take long after I had abandoned my assumption that I’m a man, that my femininity slowly returned, and two months later I had found my name, realized that I’d want to go through life as a woman, outed myself to everyone I knew, and went full-time.

I had started the journey that would bring many incredible changes, and opened my eyes that many things, that I had assumed to be normal, where anything but. I started to recognize myself in the mirror, I began to feel a connection to my body I never had before, this was my body, and I began to value it and first like, and then, over time, love it.