My journey with gender was complicated and, in the end, based on a misunderstanding of my own mind. I was born female, but from a young age, I felt a deep discomfort with the changes of puberty, especially with developing breasts. I hated them and wanted them gone. I now believe a lot of my feelings were tangled up with other mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and a very low sense of self-worth. I also have a disability, and I think I struggled to separate that physical reality from my feelings about my gender.

I found a lot of my community and identity online, and I was heavily influenced by what I read and the friends I made in those spaces. I started identifying as non-binary first, but that eventually shifted to me believing I was a trans man. I sincerely believed I had gender dysphoria. I started saying "I have gender dysphoria" instead of "I am trans" because it felt more accurate to me, like my disability—it was something I had, not all that I was.

I took testosterone for a period of time. It did change my voice, and I noticed that made a huge difference in how the world saw me. I saw how powerful a voice was when I misgendered a ski instructor with long hair; I thought they were a woman until I heard their deep voice and immediately switched to seeing them as a man. I also had top surgery to remove my breasts. I don't regret the surgery itself because I am more comfortable without breasts, but I deeply regret the reasons why I did it and the path I took to get there.

My turning point came when I began to understand my mental health better. I realized that a lot of my desire to transition was a form of escapism. I was trying to escape from myself, from my past trauma, and from the discomfort of living in a body that felt weak and vulnerable due to my disability. I was trying to become someone entirely new. I also started to recognize that some of my feelings might have been related to other conditions, like OCD or even symptoms that can appear in dissociative disorders, where a person can have a gender-discordant identity.

I stopped taking hormones and began to detransition. I benefited greatly from non-affirming therapy that helped me address my underlying issues—my depression, my anxiety, and my trauma—instead of just focusing on gender. Through that process, I understood that my problem wasn't with being a woman; it was with how I felt about myself as a person. I had internalized a lot of negative ideas about what it means to be a woman, and transitioning felt like a way out of that.

Today, I see gender differently. I think gender dysphoria is a real experience for some people, but its symptoms can overlap with many other psychological conditions, making it very difficult to diagnose correctly. I am frustrated that in online spaces, there's a reluctance to ever say, "Maybe that doesn't mean you're trans," and to explore other causes first. My biggest regret is that I wasn't encouraged to look deeper before making permanent changes. I am infertile now because of the hormones I took, and that is a lasting consequence I have to live with.

I am now comfortable living as a woman, but it's a hard-won comfort. It came from untangling my mental health, accepting my body as it is, and making peace with my past.