4 years ago I pretended to be non binary as a joke and it felt “weird” when people referred to me as such, so I ended up ending it by saying turns out I’m a man.

And then me people referred to me as a man I got that same feeling of dread all of a sudden. Like out of nowhere it was working and then it stopped.

This culminated in me having a 4 year journey, I gotta skip most of this for conciseness, but I went from NB male, to male-girl, to NB male again, to girl and finally I decided at the end of that I was going to “get serious” about this and start transitioning medically.

At the start of it, it genuinely was difficult to describe just how much better my life got. I suddenly identified extremely with women, I suddenly cared about my body, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate a euphoric beam when someone called me a girl, etc. and people even noticed how much happier I looked, people saw how I suddenly was way more engaged with people as “people” (also for the first time in my life, I had like romance, I’ve legitimately never been able to express myself with another person before, but “as a woman” I could)

but there were problems because while this was happen I also still seemed to identified with my “male” self and it seems like this didn’t happen at all with other trans women. Then when I identified more with my male self, I also found that being a woman then to be really unappealing. These little things built up into my brain until suddenly, all that joy, all that wonder, and all that caring went out the window because I thought that I was just making it all up in my head so I could “save myself”.

This ended up being the single worst winter of my life. I had to quit HRT, I felt like a failure to everyone around me, and that bliss I felt about “being a girl” disappeared and was instead replaced with this dread (although against my will she would keep popping up again at unfortunate moments)

Managed to talk to a therapist about this, and we did go over the various things that lead me to this point where we did come to the conclusion that I seemly wanted both but at different periods. And I came to a revelation that despite all this, I never really accepted myself as trans.

Like I just kind of jumped into it. Admittedly completely on my own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and fault lol. But I decided to take a step back and look for the various “am I trans” stuff and I did come across various articles on this. One of the big ones being the Stained Glass woman’s article on using the scientific method to see if you are cisgendered or not.

Not going to say the 3 situation she gives you, (also I see her here every so often so if she’s see this, thank you!!!!!!!) (here’s the link: https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/how-to-figure-out-if-youre-trans?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2 ) but I’ll say that my reaction to the first one was first feeling a wave a confusion/hesitation at first, then when the social part of it started a wave of euphoria suddenly hit by a “I want this so bad, I really wish I was trans, you don’t know how badly I want this”.

Unfortunately tho, I did have a really perplexed feeling on the 2nd situation, But I did have the “trans” reaction to the 3rd one.

So using that I was able to deduce that yes, these past 4 years of my life, along with these little things before hands led me to believe that I am in fact trans. In fact this points to me being specifically gender fluid by the way that I acted.

Which was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmarish to me. Because being gender fluid means I have no real set goal, no real objective. Like “as a trans woman” there is a fairly clear direction to go from realizing this (for the most part, ofc there is no right way to be a woman). But now I got the, at least for me, worst possible option.

I was now trying to be a guy again and that work, up until the point where it didn’t. I couldn’t get this girl who now lives rent free (almost literally) in my head. But while I was having this hatred for myself, while I was trying my best to “force her out” I realized something:

There’s no way this isn’t real. There’s no excuse at this point that I’m lying to myself if I’m actively trying to fight the lie. She’s actually real.

So yeah I’m trans, yay.

I don’t recommend doing what I did. I think there were about a billion and one ways I could’ve explored my gender identity more productively, Pride is important, I understand that now more than ever.

So now I guess I’m moving onto gender expression, I would like to get back on HRT wasn’t on it long enough to see it’s effects. Along with other stuff But we will see.

Dunno if this fully helps or anything but this is my story, as goofy as it is at point lol. Wishing you the best in your journey!!!!

Edit: I am happier now that I’ve accepted myself. Although I still feel a bit lost in terms of what to do expression wise lol. I am a better person now (imagine the type of person that would knowing faking being NB to get brownie points and while I actually ended up being trans, it wasn’t that far off from who I used to be), so I am happier. That’s nice lol.