My whole journey with this started when I was a teenager. I was deeply uncomfortable with my body, especially when I started developing breasts during puberty. I hated them. It wasn't just about how they felt on my body, but how other people saw them. I felt like they sexualized me and made me a target for attention I never wanted. I just wanted to be seen as a person, not a girl with breasts. I felt a lot of pressure to be a certain type of feminine that I just wasn't, and I think that played a huge part in my discomfort.

I started spending a lot of time online, and that's where I found communities that seemed to have an answer for what I was feeling. They said my hatred of my breasts and my rejection of ultrafeminine stereotypes meant I was probably trans, specifically a trans man. It felt like a solution. It gave me a new identity to step into, one that felt like an escape from the person I was so unhappy being. I was influenced heavily by what I read online; it gave me a framework to understand my confusion, but I now see it was a very narrow and rigid framework.

I socially transitioned in my late teens. I changed my name and asked people to use he/him pronouns. It felt freeing at first, like I was finally taking control. But looking back, I think a lot of it was about escaping the pressures and expectations placed on me as a female. I was also struggling with depression and anxiety, which I now believe were the root causes, not my gender.

I was convinced that medical transition was the next logical step. I believed that if I got top surgery and took testosterone, all my problems with my body and my self-esteem would be solved. I got top surgery when I was 21. I don't regret the surgery itself because it relieved the specific distress I had about my chest, but I deeply regret the reasons why I felt I needed it and the system that so readily provided it without digging deeper.

I started testosterone soon after. I was on it for about two years. I experienced serious health complications from it, including problems with my blood pressure and other issues that my doctor said were directly linked to the hormones. I am also now infertile, which is something I didn't fully process or understand the permanence of when I started. This is a lasting consequence that I have to live with.

I began to detransition after a period of intense reflection. I started to question everything. I realized that my initial feelings were less about being a man and more about rejecting a stereotypical version of womanhood that I felt trapped by. I saw that the communities I was in were reinforcing the very gender stereotypes they claimed to be breaking down. I also became very suspicious of the medical industry pushing these treatments without enough research into their long-term effects, especially on young people.

I benefited greatly from non-affirming therapy. My new therapist helped me work through my body issues, my depression, and my anxiety without automatically affirming a transgender identity. We explored my past, my discomfort with puberty, and my low self-esteem. This was the help I really needed all along, not hormones and surgery.

My thoughts on gender now are that it's largely a set of social stereotypes. Dressing a certain way or having certain interests shouldn't be tied to an identity. I'm a woman who doesn't like feminine clothes and who hated her breasts. That doesn't make me less of a woman; it just makes me me. I think society needs to become a lot more tolerant of people who don't fit neatly into boxes so that fewer kids feel the need to change their bodies to feel okay.

I do have regrets. I regret that I was influenced so heavily online. I regret that I didn't get the right kind of psychological help first. I regret the permanent health complications and the loss of my fertility. I don't regret the relief that top surgery gave me from my specific chest dysphoria, but I regret the path I took to get there. My journey was a long and painful detour that I wish I had never had to take.