why do other trans people have such cool life stories
I didn't try on my mom's clothes
I didn't hang out with the girls at school
I didn't play with makeup
I didn't "act like a girl"
I didn't hate my name
I didn't cross dress
I didn't let myself look inwards
I didn't get told "we always suspected" when I came out
I didn't know
I just felt sad and wrong and I didn't know why.
I was hollow and my emotions didn't make sense
every relationship I tried went sour because I didn't feel anything
if I didn't get that time during covid to really think, I might never have figured it out. I might have gone my entire life as a sad but ok most of the time, guy
it always hurts when I read or hear some trans person's journey as they recount every instance where it was "clearly a sign" and they were just born in the wrong body and they were basically a girl anyway and...
because of this, I just never related to these few trans people I saw in the public eye. I thought of it as this rare disorder that was for therapists to diagnose
it took me a while to realize it wasn't about who I had been. It was about who I wanted to become
@ivy I feel like I had some signs, but my experiences as a girl (I have transed into a boy) were very real despite my current identity. I feel like I had a lot of fluidity. There was even a time when I cried as a child because I thought I looked like a boy. But then I was also a huge “tomboy” who loved dirt and fighting lol. In highschool, being hyperfeminine, while it was a mask and crutch, was one of the few things that held me together and helped me maintain a smidgen of sanity. But now that I’m out as trans it’s like this strange, unidentifiable thing just clicked and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been because I’m just content. Like “oh. Yeah. It’s not that big of a deal, I just want to be a boy.” anyways this was a lot for a masto comment beeee who you aaaareee foooor your priiiiide
@ivy hi there i just want you to know this entire story rings true for me
But we're both here and we're both trans and we don't need stories like that to make us valid trans ppl
I'm sure even without the time for introspection it would have eventually boiled over
I'm sure we'd have figured it out sooner or later
I especially like the line "i didn't let myself look inwards"
The oddest things can trigger introspection, though
It could have been anything
Be glad it happened sooner rather than later, but if you're trans then you're trans and I'm a firm believer that figuring it out is inevitable with how visible trans people are today
@ivy i guess if we want to split hairs you could say I'm not "as trans" as some people since I'm actually quite fond of many of my kinda masculine traits and identify somewhere in the area between "vaguely a girl" and "vaguely boyish but ultimately devoid of gender"
But fuck that I'm still sure as hell not a dude
Wasn't happy pretending to be one
And im continuing to find myself
Life is good
I don't need a cool backstory, im writing a cool story with my life right now!
@deadofwinter I sure do like that notion that the boil over will happen sooner or later
it's nice to think that either way I'll wind up here, bonus points that I'm not going any longer building up regret
I definitely relate to being more not a guy than I am a girl. I've felt pretty comfortable with the demigirl label but that could very well change if I find something else that sticks
keep writing that story!! it has to begin somewhere :hatched_trans:
@ivy You're not alone in that. I also didn't do any of those things before the night my egg cracked. I married a trans woman and even she didn't clock me before my egg cracked. My entire family and all of my friends were surprised, they didn't suspect. Heck, my grandma said she was mad, not because I was trans, but because I never gave her any clue that I was!
For me, the entry point was hearing the stories of non-binary trans people and finally being safe enough to stop holding the door shut.
@ivy After the egg-cracking, there were tons of "signs" retroactively I could point to - obsession with gender-bending stories, playing games as women characters, the things I didn't let myself admit about the stories I read on fictionmania and other fanfiction. But I lived for more than 30 years as a cishet man and believed myself to be one - and was absolutely wrong.
I share this all to say, you're not alone and glad to have you here now :QueerCatHeart_Trans:
@JoscelynTransient
I guess part of the problem for me was that some narcissistic or self preservation part of myself wouldn't let me do anything remotely feminine
I think this peaked with me beginning to join the military and covid thankfully bought me some time
when I first started experimenting after that, it was this huge rush of trying everything "girly" and it was pretty nice
I don't really have anything to point to but emotions, but I'm so happy to be here now
we made it in the end and that's all that matters :bugcat_love: :hatched_trans:
@ivy I doubt it was narcissism - usually that's a way for us to cope with the trauma of growing up and feeling unsafe and not right, even if we don't fully understand why. As my journey has gone on, thanks to some really great trauma therapy, I reconnected with the little girl I was as a child without realizing it and began to heal by nurturing that part of myself.
It's so common, so many of us wind up in the military trying to somehow force ourselves into masculinity, but it doesn't work
@Terra@JoscelynTransient@ivy@Impossible_PhD I hung out with a few girls in passing periods, but honestly I didn't hang out with that many people in school period. The rest is a match; my signs only seemed obvious to me in retrospect, after I understood enough to see them. I didn't have any trans friends; my only exposure to trans life was parasocial.
The thing is, in retrospect, I was really trans. It took reading an article which was so similar to my experience that I couldn't deny the signs anymore in order to hatch, and that happened when I was 40. As far as I know it was a surprise to everyone.
"It wasn't about who I had been, it was about who I wanted to become" is probably the best encapsulation of that experience that I've ever read. :heart_transgender:
@Terra@JoscelynTransient@ivy@Impossible_PhD You know, reading things like this and seeing so many comments under it makes me so happy? We made it. We're not alone. We're among family now.
@Terra@JoscelynTransient@ivy Terra is right! I never had any of those experiences either. I miss the chance at them--but this is what made me me. I can't be mad about that.
@Impossible_PhD@Terra@ivy yeah, if I had figured things out and had access to care years earlier in my life, I think that would have been kinder to the girl I was, but then it wouldn't be Joscelyn here today but some other woman.
My only regret I would actually have changed is maybe figuring things out in 2018 before starting my PhD, rather than smack dab in the middle in later 2019, and also sparing my wife some of the heartbreak that came from figuring things out after we got married.
@Impossible_PhD@Terra@ivy this would be something I would study if I had the money: what's more common and what are the differing patterns for girls that transition after 30? Is it more likely that they had no idea and didn't have the stereotypical history or if having experiences with crossdressing and some of the more stereotypical stories? What are the patterns around this difference?
It's just my impression, but I feel like having no clue until the day your egg cracks is really common 30+
@JoscelynTransient@Terra@ivy It is. So is knowing, but not thinking it counts, and repression. I think the epiphany crowd is way more common past 30 though.
And then there's the ones whose eggs crack, but they aren't in a position to transition.
I've been debating whether or not it's better to know or not know. Not know why you feel like a zombie walking through life, or knowing why, but unable to do anything for it? Knowing allowed me to at least try to alleviate the depression. On the other hand, for me it also ended any thoughts I had of a typical life - spouse, kids, etc. So... :akko_shrug:
Suppose, in one of those "there were no signs" moments, you instead went, "This is a sign". So many of our eggs crack in "transition or die" moments. My egg crack was like this:
"I can't wait to go home for Spring Break so I can raid my mom's closet! Wait... that isn't normal..."
In other words, my egg crack, while traumatic, wasn't a life-or-death situation. I just went into full zombie mode for four years or so. 🧟♀️
I never really felt "in the moment" in my body and there was always too many things happening upstairs so it wasn't long before I stumbled upon hypno stuff (mostly porn :/ )
It's kinda hard to write some of this, so sorry if it isn't very well written/missing bits. I'm not going to proofread it
I quickly found some creators who made affirmation stuff, especially Tess' stuff
I didn't really know or care that she was trans when I first got into her stuff, but I quickly got really into a few files where she, with relativly little kink stuff, basically called me a girl before bed. I was hooked on this stuff and just couldn't get enough of it. it finally gave me this feeling of being whole that I had originally sought after
I liked it so much it became pretty unhealthy. I kept chasing this feeling to a degree that I even tried listening to it on the bus
I was falling behind on work because I would just do that stuff all day
one day I learned the creator I was really into was trans and it blew my mind. I never saw her as anything other than a woman and I realized that trans people really could be 100% their gender
but,
still no egg crack
this is when egg me was really a thing because I wished I could be trans. I still didn't know that I could literally just be trans and clung to all of the stuff in the parent post here as reasons why I couldn't be trans
it wasn't until a person sent me a link for https://turn-me-into-a-girl.com/
that I finally cracked my egg and started to piece together that last bit
I was still super torn on what to do but I did eventually start experimenting and letting euphoria be my guide before I finally decided that I wanted to pursue fully transitioning
looking back, interestingly it seems all of the stuff I was ashamed of stopped when I started experimenting
fast forward a bit, and a year after coming out to my parents, I decided that I wanted to pursue hrt
I managed to get in with a doc who would prescribe it (you only need your gp to prescribe it in Canada)
I started hrt the last week of December, and I've been on it for about 6 months now
@ivy@NicolaElle@Terra@Impossible_PhD you're in good company on this - so many of us only are able to access ourselves before through forced feminization/sissy/gender change stories like that. I spent 20 years on fictionmania reading forced feminization and magic gender change stories....for very cis reasons 😅
You don't need to be ashamed of it. Others might not get it, but most of us understand all too well
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