Thank you for sharing! And it’s really nice to know it’s something you feel confident about. I’m very familiar with those early doubts. “Am I faking it?” “Is this really what I want?” “Are my feelings invalid because of x reason?” I feel that getting past those thoughts and feeling fully confident in yourself and who you are, can be just as much of a trial as realizing you’re trans in the first place.
For me, its a long story. (Seriously, wall of text ahead. Sorry)
My experiences go as far back as middle school, though I had no idea at the time. See that’s the earliest I can remember really thinking about gender and what it meant to me. And I decided that it didn’t mean much of anything. I never felt entirely tied to being a man. If someone were to ask me for a list of all the defining features I describe myself with, being a guy would never be on that list. And I even distinctly remember thinking that, if I were to wake up the next day and magically become a girl, I wouldn’t mind. I might even find it interesting just to see what it’s like. No way these feelings will be important later in life. Nope. Not at all.
Fast forward many years to last May. I was on a discord call with a couple friends, and somehow my views on gender came up. I don’t exactly remember how or why it came up, but I ended up talking about everything I just described. Next thing I know one friend is just going off in the text chat. “Oh my god Max is an egg! Oh my effing God I can’t believe Max is an egg!” To which I respond “What are you talking about??? You’re scaring me.”
The other friend explained that an egg is a closeted trans person who hasn’t realized they’re trans yet. My immediate response was to say that they were both insane and there’s absolutely no way I could be trans.
Six days. Six days of anxious self reflection and talking to friends was all it took for my meger and fragile shell to crack and break. I vividly remember the evening it happened. Staying up really late, playing Bug Fables, quite literally huddled up in a closet. At the suggestion of a friend I decided to use a face change filter app, just to see how I might look as a girl.
And it was at this moment that everything I knew about myself, my entire world and how I saw myself, it all shattered. I saw my face looking back at me, in a way that I knew I wanted to be. The feeling in my heart was indescribable. My first taste of gender euphoria.
The following month was kinda rocky. I spent time exploring myself, getting to try on lots of different dresses and women’s clothes which was great. (Shout out to my amazing aunt who sent my mom home with a huge bag full of dresses and skirts as soon as she found out I was trans). But that time was also filled with a lot of doubt and second guessing myself. And there was also all the difficulty that came with coming out to my parents. They weren’t hostile or anything. They just had a lot of doubts and misconceptions that were really frustrating to work through.
And by the end of the month I found myself question who I was again. And ultimately I decided it just wasn’t for me. It was nice to experiment and explore myself, but being trans just who I was. As you can probably tell this idea didn’t stick.
While at first my thoughts were genuine, that was only in the beginning. For the longest time I was content being how I always was, not because I was happier that way. But instead because I thought it wasn’t worth the hassle of transitioning. “I’m perfectly fine living as my mediocre self even though I know I’d be happier as a girl, all because I don’t want to deal with the troubles it would come with.”
This period of denial lasted for just about an entire year. But thankfully a close friend of mine talked me through all my worries and concerns, and helped nudge me to realizing who I really am again. That was about four months ago, and I’m more confident now than I’ve ever been.