My whole journey with gender has been confusing and painful, and it’s taken me a long time to start understanding what was really going on with me. I was born female, and for a long time, I didn't want to be. A lot of my feelings started during puberty. I hated the changes my body was going through, especially developing breasts. It felt wrong and foreign, like my body was betraying me. I didn't have the words for it then, but looking back, I was deeply uncomfortable.

I found a lot of my feelings explained online and in the communities I was in. At first, I identified as non-binary, but that quickly shifted to identifying as a trans man. It felt like an answer to all my discomfort. I thought if I could just change my body, the feeling of wrongness would go away. I was also struggling with a lot of other things at the time, like depression and really low self-esteem. I think I saw transition as a way to escape from myself and from the traumas I had experienced. I was influenced a lot by what I read online and by the friends I had who were also transitioning. It felt like the only way to be accepted and to finally feel okay.

I started taking testosterone. I was so sure it was the right path. But being in trans spaces started to change how I felt. I began to notice patterns that made me uncomfortable. I went to support groups and saw that a lot of the male-to-female individuals acted in ways that felt really misogynistic to me, like stereotypical men, and a lot of the female-to-male individuals, including myself, seemed to be acting out a version of masculinity that was based on being traumatised women. It was a really unsettling realisation. I never met a male-to-female person who I felt was a genuinely good person, and that started to make me question the whole foundation of what I was doing.

The turning point for me was realizing that transitioning wasn't fixing my underlying problems. My depression and self-esteem issues were still there, and the community that was supposed to be supportive often felt toxic. I saw a lot of cruelty, even within detrans spaces, where people would attack others who were just trying to heal. I had to step back. I stopped taking hormones and started the process of detransitioning. It's been hard. I'm trying to heal from my traumas and learn to feel okay with being a woman. Sometimes reading things online, even in support groups, makes me hate myself, because there's so much anger directed at people like me who are just trying to figure things out.

I don't think gender is as simple as I once believed. For me, my desire to transition was tangled up with a deep discomfort with puberty, trauma, and a need to escape. I do have regrets about my transition. I regret not understanding my own mental health better first. I regret the permanent changes to my body. But I don't regret the journey because it led me to a place where I'm finally dealing with the real issues. I'm learning to accept my body for what it is, a female body, and that's a slow and difficult process.