dazed_dreamer
at the end of everything, hold on to anything
- Sep 21, 2023
- 67
I had a gender crisis for years, identifying as FTM (for the most part, with some confusion and back-and-forth) from when I was ~12 to ~20. This and my depression were the two things that ruined my life when I was younger. I don't know how deeply the depression was connected to the dysphoria back then, whether it was largely separate or if it wouldn't have been a thing at all without the identity confusion. I lost my old sense of identity, which was largely connected to me being a people-pleasing, high-achieving, Christian girl at my Christian school. I didn't realize until my gender crisis that my entire identity was connected to making other people happy and being what I thought they wanted to be, until this crisis brought all of that into question. The choice was to lose everything I had built and everyone I had up until that point, or lose my genuine sense of self. But I didn't realize that the former wasn't a real option; you can either be yourself, or no one at all, you can't be someone else no matter how desperately you want to be. I refused to accept this truth, held on to any lingering doubts and "hail-Marys" of it being a phase, something I would grow out of, an internet trend, even a corrosive spiritual temptation. There are many examples of this, the worst and most recent being falling back into my ED and losing almost 100 pounds in 6 months through a daily restrict-binge-purge cycle because maybe I only wanted to be a man because I was fat and ugly as a girl, and I'd be okay in my body if I lost the weight and dressed the part—I knew this was a lie going in, but I tried it anyway, because it was the only other explanation I had left. By going for the false option, I ended up losing both my internal sense of self and external community and identity over the years.
If it weren't for the pandemic, I most likely would have come out as transgender to m family when I was 17 or 18, around early fall of 2020. My mental health was improving through the my junior year, and a large part of that was reckoning with my gender crisis and the dysphoria I experienced at that time. I feel so detached from that now. The thought of being a man seems like a joke. But I have to wonder if I am genuinely over it, or if it's actually because of my detachment from myself. I don't "feel like a woman", I don't feel okay and present in my body, I haven't gained a confidence in myself and a happy-enough life beyond that period of crisis: I just don't feel like a person at all. I've experienced some level of dissociation for a while, but it's gotten so much worse recently, and I've realized that my dismissal of my trans identity and lack of dysphoria coincides with the worsening of my detachment. I wonder now if that's the problem, if I would feel like somebody if I had accepted that version of myself, if it was true. Or if it's just a fantasy, and I would be just as miserable or even worse off in a semi-male body, living a man's life.
It feels too late to do anything now, I'm too far gone at this point, I just wanted to get this out there. There's a lot more I could add if anyone's interested. Thank you for this space to vent.
If it weren't for the pandemic, I most likely would have come out as transgender to m family when I was 17 or 18, around early fall of 2020. My mental health was improving through the my junior year, and a large part of that was reckoning with my gender crisis and the dysphoria I experienced at that time. I feel so detached from that now. The thought of being a man seems like a joke. But I have to wonder if I am genuinely over it, or if it's actually because of my detachment from myself. I don't "feel like a woman", I don't feel okay and present in my body, I haven't gained a confidence in myself and a happy-enough life beyond that period of crisis: I just don't feel like a person at all. I've experienced some level of dissociation for a while, but it's gotten so much worse recently, and I've realized that my dismissal of my trans identity and lack of dysphoria coincides with the worsening of my detachment. I wonder now if that's the problem, if I would feel like somebody if I had accepted that version of myself, if it was true. Or if it's just a fantasy, and I would be just as miserable or even worse off in a semi-male body, living a man's life.
It feels too late to do anything now, I'm too far gone at this point, I just wanted to get this out there. There's a lot more I could add if anyone's interested. Thank you for this space to vent.
