My whole journey with this started when I was a teenager. I was a straight guy who was attracted to girls, but I had a lot of anxiety and low self-esteem. I didn't feel like I measured up to other men, and I started consuming a lot of porn. The porn really changed my sexuality and my libido over time. It became a big problem for me, an addiction that I tried to deal with when I was 19, but instead, I just got more sucked into it.

I think that's what led me to start questioning my gender. I began to believe that my discomfort with myself meant I was supposed to be a woman. I got really influenced by what I was reading online in certain communities. People would say things like, "Everyone can pass after enough time on estrogen," and I wanted to believe that was true. I started labelling myself as a femboy, which I now see as a step into putting myself in a box that limited my potential as a male.

I transitioned socially and medically for a while. I took hormones. But I became really fixated on the idea of "passing." I did a lot of research into Facial Feminization Surgery (FFS) because I was desperate to look like a woman. Through my research, I came to understand the harsh reality that it's not a guarantee. I realized that male and female skulls are fundamentally different in size and proportion, and no amount of surgery can truly change that underlying structure. Things like your height or hand size are talked about, but people often ignore the skull, which is a major factor. This was a huge wake-up call for me.

I also started to see patterns in the community that bothered me. I read stories about older men, husbands and fathers, who would suddenly announce they were transitioning after decades of living as men, sometimes when their wives were pregnant. To me, that seemed to ooze with narcissism, like they were destroying their families for a fantasy. I began to suspect that for many, including perhaps myself, it was a form of escapism from other problems, not a true identity.

Ultimately, I realized my desire to transition was tangled up with my porn addiction, my low self-esteem, and a misunderstanding of my own discomfort. I wasn't a woman. I was a man who had gotten lost. I decided to detransition.

Now, I'm having to deal with the porn addiction all over again. My main regret is that I ever started down that path and believed the false promises I read online. I don't think transitioning was the right solution for me. I benefited from stepping back and critically evaluating the information I was given, instead of just accepting it. I believe that for a lot of people, especially young men, the issue isn't gender dysphoria but other underlying issues like depression, anxiety, or addiction that need to be addressed first.