#trans doubt

I do not wish to let go of my dead name all of the time, because love was put into it, paid for its presence, consecutively invested in fees of affection that have brought life into it, into me.

I like how my brother calls out to it, how he speaks of his sister.

I enjoy the way my old childhood teachers seem to remember it.

It is property of a me that I attempt my best at taking care of.

What about hormones?

Well, recently I might have sinned on my transition research behalf and allowed myself to investigate it all; the lights, the shadows, pride alongside shame — Into my rabbit hole I found detransitioners, just about everywhere and anywhere, speaking of the horrors in things they believed would never change and how it all cursed their physiques.

So many trans people, as well, claiming it changed parts of themselves they did not even dare or thought of considering, such as scent.

I like my scent, I enjoy that primal aspect of my existence. Sometimes I enjoy how I look, sometimes I do not hate my body's 'feminine'/female qualities.

Then how can I change those things?

And I choose not to, how do I live with the grief of being someone whose shoes never quite fit? An identity continously causing blisters in my will?

I'm doing it for all of the times I wanted to go but missed it. For all of the times I looked at strangers with beards and envied them. For all of the times people called me "young man" and I felt undeniably happy.

11/30/2020

tw, doubt, dysphoria, a bunch of other crappy trans related problems

today i made the very moronic decision of posting a tik tok venting about dysphoria today. i received multiple comments from 16 year olds telling me to “google tocd.” what i found in the results was honestly very dangerous. 

doubt is something i’m very familiar with, having been in the closet for 19 years. while presenting as cis, the innermost thought that was the backdrop to everything wasn’t necessarily “im in the wrong body” but more “something is wrong, and i feel like nobody knows me.” the thought “am i transgender” was constantly followed up by my very conscious follow up thought

“no, you aren’t transgender, transgender people are in pain all of the time, transgender people don’t question it, transgender people face so much bigotry and pain, you don’t want to face all of that bigotry and pain do you? even if you are transgender, you wouldn’t want to transition because you like dating men too much, men will never want to date you if you transition.” (i haven’t transitioned yet, but from what i know so far that last anxiety isn’t really true at all.) sometimes these purposeful counter thoughts would last for so long that they started getting pretty weird and meta. things like “if you were transgender, you are somebody who is so honest and doesn’t care what other people think, you would have already transitioned by now!” which is hard to make sense of in retrospect.

after coming out, and presenting as a woman, i don’t necessarily have these long battles with myself as often anymore, but i’d be lying if i said they went away entirely. its much easier to spot what my true feelings are and what is surpression now, but i still have moments where i’ll think, “what the fuck am i doing?” i think addressing this doubt head on is something that is really overlooked in the trans community, but is really important, because being trans isn’t about following a checklist, but following your authenticity. without doubt, how are we going to be sure if something is right for us? i still have doubt from time to time, where i’ll think maybe i am some form of nonbinary, or just a feminine man, it’s easy to tackle these thoughts as now i approach them with no fear, knowing the answer to them will not be a challenge to deal with, as i have already dealt with coming out as a woman.

here’s where that tik tok comment comes in. tOCD, or Transgender Related OCD, is not related to being transgender, but actually linked with OCD, with a fixation on transgender identity. i read a few stories from people with this and felt overwhelmed with shock at how similar these stories felt to mine. lying awake at night combatting the question “am i transgender?” feeling an immense sense of fear or dread along with the idea of transitioning, or “becoming transgender,” and the thoughts being triggered by certain random things. these things all felt very familiar to my experience, as my thoughts of being trans before i was out were not at all happy. that is the common difference i kept reading “for transgender people, these thoughts bring them joy, make them happy, and do not cause distress or make them try to combat these feelings.” this description of trans experience was not at all similar to my experience, this made me increasingly fearful that i had gotten it all wrong.

i threw myself into a rabbit hole. i read forum after forum, i tried to analyze a scientific study, i read blog posts and discussion boards. i do not often spend my time on the internet on forums with neurodivergent people, or in neurodivergent spaces, though i am neurodivergent, it doesn’t impact my life in many major ways so i do not seek those spaces, but finding a lot of tOCD forums, there is a MASSIVE amount of transphobia hidden there. while there are 100% cisgender people with tOCD, it looks like to me a lot of closeted trans people (or eggs) have co-opted that space in order to talk down their own thoughts. this makes the few tOCD forums that exist a dangerous mix of people assisting each other through their intrusive thoughts, and eggs spewing transphobic rhetoric in the comments of confused and nervous people. this was absolutely not healthy for me to see, and if you are going to do research yourself, i recommend checking in with yourself and your triggers, because it is really difficult to find the distinction from what i’ve found. 

i can report, i am a woman. this is something that is unwaivering through all of my forms of doubt. this is something that is a truth regardless of my thoughts, and regardless of my feelings. before i knew this though, my thoughts were not at all joyful when trying to find out this discovery. discovering i was a trans woman this whole time, meant i had been spending the past 19 years of my life, in a sense, lying to the people around me. it had meant i was spending my life up to this point, dormant, or not being my true self. it had meant i was going to have to go through expensive treatments, therapy, and oppression. all these thoughts of me being a woman were clouded entirely by overwhelming fear, so no, i didn’t feel happy when my thoughts approached me, in fact i felt nothing but overwhelming dread, and a desire to push those thoughts away.

living as a woman and embracing my gender identity has proven to be nothing but helpful, and has made me feel nothing but more confident and true to myself. the truth is always behind the panic, and when it comes to your gender identity, there’s very little reason to panic.

As some of you might have read in my previous post, I struggle with self hatred and internelized transphobia. I am a man, born in a female body. So a transman, if you like. I’ve been out for six years and been going under male pronounces and my chosen name since then. I’ve undergone extensive physical and mental evaluations during the last four years and been diagnosed with severe gender dysphoria twice by different teams consisting of doctors, therapists, and psychiatrists. I am comfortable in my identity as a man, or at least as comfortable as a transgender person can be in their gender.

I’ve been on hormone blockers for two and a half years while I waited for testosterone. But when I finally got that call from the endocrinology doctor, giving me the green light, I felt doubt for the first time. I’ve been certain in my decision for years, longing for the day when I finally got to start T. I though I would be happy, over the moon with joy, but instead I felt dread.

‘What am I doing?’ I though. ‘What if I regret it?’ ‘is there even such a thing as transgender?’ ‘What if I’m just a confused woman?’ ‘Destroying my body and signing up to inject myself with foreign hormones for the rest of my life, how could that be considered normal?’

I didn’t take my first testosterone injection that day in december. I continued with blockers. I started doing research. Watching videos of detransitioners. Reading articles of people blaming doctors for ruining their life by “brainwashing them into becoming a man and destroying their body”. Came across Tumblrs preaching about how there is no such thing as “trans”. That there is only confused women, lured into medically transitioning by the patriachy.  

I could never relate to any of the detransitioners stories. I have never been raped. I am not autistic. I am not a child, pressured into anything by hollywood parents. I have never considered myself as a lesbian. 

But one thing I do have is severe, soulcrushing dysphoria. I could not possibly see myself as a woman, growing old in this body. I hate every single female characteristic I posses. Scars covering my body from attempts to transform myself into an unrecognitionable lump of flesh, free from my womanhood. But yet here I am. On the brink to happiness, which I refuse myself due to self doubt. 

I’ve always suffered from anxiety in decisionmaking. It does’nt matter if it’s about how I cut my hair, which buss I’m taking, or what colour soes I should get. I think that is just how I work. Hesitant by nature. So why would it invalidate my transition? Why would it be smooth sailing when absoloutely nothing else is?