My name isn't important, but my story is. I’m writing this to share my journey from transitioning to detransitioning, in the hope that it might help someone else feel less alone.

It all started when I was a teenager. I hated the changes my body was going through during puberty. I developed a deep discomfort with my breasts and my entire female body. Looking back, I now see this was mixed up with some traumatic experiences I had with a boy when I was 13. I also struggled a lot with depression and anxiety, and I had very low self-esteem.

I found a lot of community and answers online, but I now realize I was heavily influenced by social media and the people I talked to. It felt like I had finally found a reason for all my pain: I must be a trans man. I thought transitioning was the only way to escape the discomfort and the person I was. It was a form of escapism.

I socially transitioned and started living as a man. My parents were surprisingly supportive when I first told them I thought I might be female. I think they were just happy to see me taking steps to feel better. I even started taking testosterone. But a strange thing happened. The gender dysphoria I was trying to cure never actually went away. It was still there, just in a different way.

After a while, I started a type of therapy that wasn't anti-trans, but was focused on really understanding me and getting to the root of my feelings. That was the turning point. Through that process, I began to realize that my desire to transition was tangled up with my trauma, my mental health struggles, and the influence of the online world. I wasn't running toward being a man; I was running away from being a woman.

I made the difficult decision to detransition. I was terrified about what people would think, especially after everyone had been so supportive of my transition. But I was wrong to worry. The people who truly loved me were just as supportive. My mother even confessed she was secretly happy and relieved, because she believed my life would be easier if I could find a way to be happy in the body I was born with. And I think she was right.

I stopped taking hormones and went back to living as a female. I still have moments of gender dysphoria, but it dominates my mind a lot less now. I’m finally in a much happier space, working on accepting my female body for what it is.

Do I have regrets? Yes, I do regret transitioning. I regret that I didn't have the right kind of help to understand my feelings sooner. I don't think I was truly trans. I was a confused young person trying to solve deep-seated pain, and I was given the wrong solution.

My thoughts on gender now are that it's a very personal and complicated journey. For some people, transition is absolutely the right path. For me, it was a detour I needed to take to finally understand and accept myself. The most important thing is to be true to yourself, be honest about your feelings, and find a support system that helps you figure out what’s right for you, not what anyone else says you should be.

Here is a timeline of my journey: