My whole journey with this started because I hated my body when I hit puberty. I developed breasts early and I hated them; they felt foreign and wrong on me. I felt incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin and thought that if I could just look like a boy, that deep unease would go away. I was also struggling with depression and anxiety, and looking back, I think a lot of this was tied to low self-esteem and a discomfort with becoming a woman, not necessarily that I was a man.

I found a lot of this community online, first on Tumblr and then here on Reddit in 2018. I was diagnosed with "transexualism" and I started taking testosterone. I thought it was the answer to all my problems. For a while, I even identified as non-binary, using terms like demigirl for a bit after I stopped T, but that didn't last.

I did take testosterone, but I never got top surgery or any other procedures. I consider myself lucky for that now. I do worry about my fertility sometimes. I've talked with others about it, and I know that some people on T can still get pregnant, but it's a real fear for me and something I think about. I was even briefly engaged to a male detransitioner, and we both worried that the hormones we had taken would affect our ability to have children.

A big part of my story is that I don't regret my transition in the same way some others do. I'm not bitter about the medical care I received because I did go back to my healthcare provider for help when I decided to detransition. I think a lot of people feel too much shame to do that, so they don't get the support they need, and that makes everything harder. I believe the number of people who detransition is a lot higher than the 1% figure that gets thrown around, because so many people don't get as far as legal changes or surgery, or they just never tell anyone they've stopped.

My views on gender and trans healthcare have changed a lot. I think there needs to be more regulation; a proper diagnosis should be required. I'm not against trans healthcare entirely—many of my friends and my partner are still trans—but I think the system failed me and many others by being too quick to affirm without digging deeper. I've been targeted by transphobia myself, with people mistaking me for a trans woman, which is a strange and frightening experience as a straight, feminine detransitioned woman.

I value having a diversity of views in these spaces. I left other communities because they felt too dogmatic, like there was only one acceptable way to think. It's important that we can all share our different experiences without being criticized for not fitting into a box.