The most miserable and confused I have ever been in my entire life.
LOOOONG ranty rambly post ahead. Just a fair warning.
Hey. This is not the first time I have posted on this subreddit. I am 21, FtMtI dont fucking know. I have been questioning my transition and my gender since July of 2025. I am currently still on T (3+ years) and have had top surgery.
I am going to begin by explaining my backstory. I started social transition when I was like, 14. it was purely online at the time. It was like 2019 or something and before covid. i experimented on and off with my gender in the following years, and eventually landed on the conclusion that I was agender but leaned masculine/male. It was at that point that I came out to my doctor and then to my mom at around 16. Starting transition was one of the most mentally exhausting things I have ever done because it felt like I had to put myself through humiliation ritual after humiliation ritual to get people to accept me. I still remember the mortification I felt every time I was referred to by my deadname and called she in high school when I was still closeted. I always felt like I had extreme social dysphoria but I never had that much physical dysphoria- I even remember trying to force myself to cry at the fact that I had breasts. In all reality I was pretty neutral about my body besides my weight and my face.
I started the path to medical transition when I was 17, and only got on hormones once I turned 18. I wanted masculinization and to be read as a guy in public, and by all means I have pretty much reached my goal. The therapy process was so fucking awkward, I don't even think I should go into all of the details about it but I remember trying to explain my identity terminology to my therapist and feeling super embarrassed. I never had dysphoria before teenagehood either, which I know is probably something that could be used against me as evidence that I was never really trans to begin with. I have scraped through every memory I can possibly find related to my experience with gender and have found many pieces of evidence that prove I am not "truly trans" in the way that many trans people are. This probably sounds fucking ridiculous but this is the way that my mind works and I will try my best to explain further.
I was never able to really relate to the whole trans experience at all. As a child I recall not really caring about my gender at all and being fine with calling myself a girl. I found much greater frustration in being seen as a weak, sheepish or small person. I enjoyed feminine things just fine but I also liked "masculine things" like video games and shonen anime and yearned to be friends with boys because they shared my interests more than girls did. Blah blah blah. The first time I remember having a weird gender-related moment was when I realized that I kind of liked it when people were unsure of my gender, despite going on to correct them later about it. Feminine puberty sucks but I mostly removed myself from any aspect of it. I was very much an outcast when it comes to the pains of growing up as a girl even though I also remember expressing excitement at getting my period. Who cares kid. Honestly now that I think about it I think I was just excited to become more grown up because a period was a sign of becoming an adult, and not excited at the prospect of becoming a woman. These are just some moments I would consider as "evidence" that I was not a dysphoric child (not "truly trans") or adolescent as most of these things happened pre-puberty.
Anyway, I was not super amped to start hormones when I did. It did not feel like this huge transitional change, more like an "alright, I'm on this now." Maybe I am just so used to this sensationalized view of transitioning but my transition has felt mostly neutral with bits of excitement and a lot of frustration sprinkled in. I was very excited to grow facial hair and it took 3 years for it to really start happening which was a source of EXTREME frustration for me early transition. I had little joys where I saw my first facial hairs coming in and gradually becoming more hairy (i was very much not hairy pre-T) and my voice drop progress was also frustrating. Most of everything about my transition was frustrating as fuck and humiliating.
Getting top surgery in 2024 was supposed to be the big "I finally feel comfortable in my body" moment that I never had, but coming out of it I still feel the same way. Neutral. I don't feel overwhelming soul fulfilling joy at having no breasts. I don't cry over the fact that I removed a part of my body that I *technically* can never get back. I just. don't really care that much??? But then there are moments now where I get this overwhelming ache in my chest that I have only been able to identify as regret. I wish there was something there but it just doesn't make any sense to me. I am, objectively, still very content with my body, even more so due to the fact that I have lost significant amounts of weight since transitioning.
Ever since july though I have felt so fucking miserable. I dropped out of college after a horrible breakup that was partially spurred on by my gender questioning. (If you look through my account you'll probably be able to find my posts about it, I have an anxiety disorder so I was obsessed with my gender and thought about it 24/7 essentially before getting medicated.) I don't feel like I'm at home in my body in any sense of the word. I look at myself in the mirror and I don't know what to think at all. I feel disconnected from myself and like I am being puppetted by something else entirely. To tell the truth I have no fucking clue what would make me happy, what gender I am or whatever I was "meant to be", I can only speculate. I have ended up feeling disgusted by masculinity because of these feelings and it hurts because I used to love it so much. I am just so utterly fucking confused. I have no idea if my disconnection from my body is due to depression or due to dysphoria, or whatever, I don't know if being feminine will make me feel more "at home" in my body (in fact I have tried experimenting with presentation alone in my room more times than I can count, I have tried to dress myself in a way that I look just like a girl and I end up feeling either ugly, disgusting or horny, which ends up making me feel disgusting anyway. Jesus fucking christ that is embarrassing to admit but whatever, it's true. I don't feel happy, or euphoric, or whatever bullshit I am supposed to feel.) or whatever. I don't have a concrete answer. I don't want to connect with my divine feminine and return to cis womanhood. It seems like a miserable existence to me.
I know realistically I am probably just non-binary and agender and don't care for gender norms or binary gender at all, but there is just. This fucking part of me that cannot let go of it. Wherever I go I will be assumed to be xyz, if I appear feminine or like a woman I will be treated like a woman. The trans community (from my perspective) is more binary than I remember it being when I was a teenager, and it scares the fuck out of me and i am increasingly being put off from interacting with it.
I just feel fucking insane for not having figured it out yet after almost a year of constant mental assault from my brain about my stupid fucking gender. And I feel like I can never explain it in a way that anybody understands either, I have talked to my therapist a little bit about this stuff but it's been tough and I have other issues besides gender anyway. it just keeps on popping back up when I think it's finally fucking gone. I have tried to ignore it but i just end up more dissociated and feeling more unreal the longer i go on living as whatever i am. It could be depression and a general lack of direction in my life at all, no job no whatever making me feel this way too, and I only have more time to ruminate on this bullshit than anyone should ever have. I don't fucking know.
I keep thinking I should just try detransitioning and see if I start to feel more like myself again. I want to try lowering my T dose as I remember feeling most emotionally content when I was on low-dose, or maybe stopping altogether but honestly I'm too scared to. I admire the presentation of androgynous people and trans women and a part of me wishes to look like them but I feel like I am being offensive for wanting to look that way. If I had to come out to my mom again too it would be an entirely new humiliation ritual, because I had to try so fucking hard to convince her to accept me it's like backing off now would be an extreme blow to my ego, as well as her perception of me. I already came out to a few friends yesterday as an experiment (using she/they pronouns and a new name, still masculine but different from my old one) but it's already been awkward. My experience with she/her pronouns also varies, sometimes it feels like a blow to the chest and other times it feels pretty pleasant. And then there's the fact that I changed my legal name and sex less than a year ago. I'm stuck in this stupid limbo feeling miserable and not knowing how to change it or if I'd even be confident enough to change it.
I don't know if my logic makes enough sense but basically if I feel like shit as a "transitioned man" (despite never transitioning with the goal of being a binary man/male?? Idk man it's confusing even to me how I got on that path), don't relate to most if any other trans men when it comes to their experiences with gender euphoria and dysphoria, I feel abstractly dysphoric and disconnected from myself when I look in the mirror, never really experienced euphoria (at least I think) from transitioning, then maybe I was wrong. Even though I feel like I am betraying myself for thinking this way. I used to be obsessed with passing and believed i would never pass and i could never see "him" in the mirror, whoever "he" was. I wish I could just press a button that could make me understand who I am and what I want to be but at the same time I'd be terrified to press it because what if I don't like what I see and what if I change my mind.
Sorry for all the nonsense but fuck it's just so frustrating. My issues probably also run deeper than just whatever gender i feel comfortable as but this is how it's manifesting so yeah. Hope this post makes sense, im open to advice or words of wisdom or whatever.