Feeling more positive recently, thinking about labels, reverse dysphoria?
Just an update on my detransition journey. I (29, FTMTF/FTMT?) came to the realisation that transitioning may have not been the right life choice and that I might want to de-transition, about a month and a half ago.
That month and a half was probably the toughest (so far) of my adult life. I’d started processing things in my life that I’d never processed, now I finally had the language and emotional scaffolding to actually feel all those feelings that I was completely numb to for so many years of my life. It honestly felt like how in movies when the protagonist who has amnesia finally experiences something that makes them get their memories back. Except since I still remembered them it was more like my (emotionally) black and white memories were finally in (emotional) colour.
I think I’m probably through the hardest patch. I say this because my brain is finally thinking about what moving forward might look like as opposed to ruminating about what could’ve been. I know my life is harder in many ways now, but I think I’m finally starting to experience some optimism and hope for being on a more suitable path for me. This Thursday would’ve been my due date for my T-shot (I won’t be taking it). I’m enjoying seeing my hair grow out, and I’m already getting better at practising speaking with a more feminine voice.
However, the more I think about my experiences now… I really did think of my plan as a detransition, but I don’t know if that’s completely accurate. I think I’m probably some flavour of non-binary (but I really struggle accepting it about myself). After all, I did spend pretty much a decade of my life as a man, and it was alright, maybe even good. I do feel a specific type of kinship and “brotherhoodness” towards men, that I think I maybe mistook as solely romantic love (though I do feel that towards them too). To put it poetically, I think part of my transition was always about feeling like I could be a horse and run with the horses (lol).
As I’ve slowly grown in the last few weeks of into experiencing myself within the context of womanhood, I started revisiting voguing (the dance), as a way to connect myself to female/feminine sexuality. It almost shocked me how much I felt so embodied doing it. I previously tried voguing, maybe five or six years ago, and I was pretty uncomfortable with any type of overt feminine sexual expression. It’s only really in the last year or so that it’s really changed for me, and that was really gradual.
I guess my connection to womanhood now is just completely different to what it was before I transitioned, and so much of it was informed by my experiences as a queer man. Like… maybe it took me being a man to be a woman? Honestly, this tracks as I am someone who has always been a bit “grass is greener on the other side”*, but also, reading accounts on this sub, seems a pretty common experience that HRT does seem to cure gender dysphoria, until a point where it starts giving gender dysphoria in reverse.
Anyway, I guess I’m wondering if any other detransitioners or re-transitioners have felt this massively increased love and appreciation of their birth sex when they realise they wanted to de/retransition, but also feel slightly like they’re not exactly going back to the same gender. Feels like experiencing the equivalent of starting “new game plus” for woman as gender. And also, if people have experienced this along with “reverse gender dysphoria”.
*Trying not to make this mistake this time though and do de/retransition very slowly and not idealise the outcomes, and trying to be okay with potentially being non binary. Again, I think I have glaringly huge signs that I might be non-binary. I think it’s just hard to believe about myself, even though I find it easy to believe for other people.