My journey into transition started when I was very young, around 13. I was a girl who felt incredibly uncomfortable with my body, especially when I started developing breasts during puberty. I hated them and felt like they were completely wrong for me. I now see that a lot of this was tied to a deep-seated anxiety and depression that I didn't understand at the time. I also had very low self-esteem and I think I was looking for a way to escape from how I felt.

I found a lot of my initial community and ideas online. The people I talked to and the content I saw made me believe that my discomfort meant I was actually a boy. It felt like the only explanation and the only solution. I started identifying as non-binary first, but that quickly shifted to identifying as a transgender man. I was so sure that medically transitioning was the only way to fix the deep unhappiness I felt.

I was put on testosterone when I was 16. The changes happened fast. My voice dropped, I grew facial hair, and my body shape changed. At the time, I thought this was what I wanted. It felt like I was finally becoming myself. When I was 18, I had top surgery to remove my breasts. I was told this would finally make me feel complete and solve my body issues.

But it didn't. After the surgery, and after years of living as a man, I realized I wasn't any happier. The depression and anxiety were still there, just covered up by the dramatic changes I had made. I started to understand that my issues weren't really about gender. I was struggling with other mental health problems, and transitioning was a way to try and run from them. I began to regret my decisions deeply.

I now believe that my discomfort with puberty and my body was more related to body dysmorphia and the general trauma of growing up than it was to being born in the wrong body. I was influenced heavily by the people I talked to online and the quick acceptance of the transition as the only answer. No one ever really explored my other mental health struggles with me; they just affirmed my new identity.

I have serious regrets about my transition. The testosterone and the surgeries have permanently changed my body. I am now infertile and have to live with the scars from my surgery. My body will never be what it was naturally meant to be, and that is a hard truth to accept. I feel like I was failed by a system that was too quick to offer medical solutions without looking at the whole picture.

I benefited greatly from finding a therapist who did not automatically affirm a transgender identity. This non-affirming therapy helped me finally address my underlying depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues. It helped me see that my problems were not solved by changing my body.

My thoughts on gender have changed completely. I don't really believe in gender identity anymore. I think we are our biological sex, and that's okay. All the discomfort I felt was about societal expectations and my own mental health, not an innate sense of being male. I was a female who was uncomfortable being female, not a male trapped in a female body.

I am now detransitioning. I've stopped testosterone and I am trying to learn to live as a woman again, in the body that I have now, which is forever altered.

Here is a timeline of my journey: