My whole journey with gender has been complicated, and looking back, I see a lot of things I wish I’d understood differently. I was born female, but I never felt like I fit in with other girls, especially when I was a teenager. I hated going through puberty; developing breasts felt like a betrayal by my own body. I just wanted to be seen as a person, not as a girl or a woman. I think a lot of this was tied up with low self-esteem and depression. I didn't like myself, and I thought changing my body was the way to fix that feeling.

I started identifying as non-binary first. It felt like a safe middle ground. But the online communities I was in were very encouraging of medical transition. I saw it as the next logical step to finally feeling comfortable. I was influenced a lot by what I read online and by friends who were also transitioning. There was a constant pressure to be more trans, to take the next step. I started taking testosterone. I was hopeful it would solve my problems.

The testosterone did some things I liked at first, like stopping my periods. But it also caused changes I wasn't prepared for. My sex drive disappeared, which was really confusing. I started to see that for some people, transition seemed to be more about a fetish than anything else. I saw guys online with a history of just porn who suddenly said they were trans, and it made me suspicious. I got banned from a big transgender forum for questioning one person's motives, just asking them to think it through. That made me realize how little room there was for any critical thought.

I began to understand that I had body dysmorphia, not gender dysphoria. I didn't hate being female; I hated the specific ways my body was changing and how society treated me because of it. I also started to see how my own discomfort was linked to internalized homophobia and the pressure to be sexual in a certain way. I thought if I wasn't a woman, I could escape all that.

I never had top surgery or any other procedures. I'm so grateful for that now. I stopped the testosterone before any major permanent changes, like a significantly deeper voice, set in. My voice had barely dropped, so I didn't have to do much voice training to sound female again. Stopping hormones was scary because I had been told my ovaries would shut down and I’d be on hormones for life. It felt like a trap I had almost walked into.

I don't regret exploring my identity because it led me to a better understanding of myself. But I deeply regret taking testosterone. I regret not questioning the narrative more and not looking deeper into my own mental health issues sooner. My thoughts on gender now are that it's often used as a simple solution for very complex problems like trauma, autism, OCD, or eating disorders. For me, it was a way to escape, but it wasn't a real solution. The real work was in dealing with my depression and learning to accept my body as it is.

Here is a timeline of my journey: