I don't know that I transitioned because I felt "in my core" that I'm a woman or whatever. I don't relate to those stories of people who had it already figured out when they were kids, I mean my egg didn't crack until I was 21. I didn't know that I wanted to be a woman. What I did know was that I hated being a man. Like, all of it, comprehensively.
All the social norms. The standard of emotional detachment and performative machismo. The expectation that I treat men as competition and women as sex objects. The fact men tried to befriend me through boys club bullshit, endearing themselves to me by treating me as "one of the guys." The fact women were fully in their rights to feel threatened by me and avoid me, just because I was a man. The fact that there were privileges offered to me specifically because I was a man. I found it all deeply hollowing.
As I got older, my body disgusted me for all the reasons I was told men are supposed to like it. It was too large, too strong, too hairy. Too masculine. Which is frankly hilarious because in hindsight I was obviously like, a malnourished twink. Women in fact weren't afraid of me at all. I still vividly recall how my then-girlfriend from college approached me specifically because she thought I seemed "passive and non-threatening." And still it was too much. I was barely a man, and yet I was too much man. I could never like myself as a man. Could never lead a life worth living as a man.
The knowledge that I was a man felt like an immovable weight chained to my leg, something that kept me from ever becoming anyone I could be proud of being. Suffocating and meaningless. I turned to philosophy, learned all the reasons people choose to keep living, found none of them compelling. What meaning could I possibly construct in a life I had to live as a man? What god was worth worshipping if they had cursed me to live a life like this?... My options exhausted, I settled on repression. I'd just... bear with it. Work hard, raise a family, live vicariously through them. In a corner of my mind, a piece of me hoped desperately that reincarnation was real, so I could be a girl next time.
It's not that I didn't know transition exists. In fact I knew several trans people. But the concept had never been presented to me in a way I could see myself in. I didn't have some sense of absolute truth in my core that told me I was definitely 100% a girl, and the few trans women I knew were so confident in themselves, so accomplished and whole and liberated, that I could never in my life find them relatable. "That could never be me", I thought to myself.
I lost my virginity on my 20th birthday. I felt... numb, afterward. I didn't understand why it was such a hollow experience. Sex was supposed to feel good, right? It was supposed to. If I was going to be a man, I had to enjoy this. And I tried to seem like I did, but in our nakedness, all I could think about was how disgusting my body was, as I felt myself being sweaty and smelly and hairy and gross. And hers was so beautiful. So desirable. So... worthy of existing. Everything I wanted to be, but never could.
In the following months, the thought wouldn't leave. It felt like a raw, dull pain in my skull. I thought about my future. I thought about carrying this pain for the rest of my life. About being a man for the rest of my life. About growing old as a man. About dying as a man.
A year later, I came out as a trans woman. Two years after that, I started HRT. In march, that was six years ago.
I still don't have that sense of absolute truth in my core. I'm not sure my core contains anything at all. But I am quite certain, at this point, that I am a woman. Because I know that being a man hurt, and being a woman does not.
