Looking back on my whole journey, it’s hard to believe where I started and where I ended up. I think my story is one of getting lost in ideas and then slowly finding my way back to a simpler truth.

For me, it all started with a deep discomfort during puberty. I hated the changes happening to my body, especially the development of my breasts. I felt like my body was betraying me, and I didn't feel connected to the idea of being a woman. At the time, I thought this discomfort meant I wasn't really a woman at all. I had a lot of anxiety and low self-esteem, and I now see I was using the idea of transition as a form of escapism from my own life and my own body. I was deeply influenced by what I saw online, in communities that offered a clear, if complicated, solution to my pain: I could be trans.

I started by identifying as non-binary, which felt like a safer first step. But eventually, I was convinced that I was a trans man and that medical transition was the only way to feel comfortable. I took testosterone for several years. It did make the feelings of hating my female characteristics go away for a while, because it changed my body so much. I also got top surgery. In the moment, it felt like a relief. But that relief was temporary.

The real turning point for me was finding this community and other non-affirming spaces. For the first time, people weren't trying to push me in one direction or another. They just wanted me to be fully informed and to think about all the reasons behind my feelings. I started to understand that my discomfort with puberty wasn't necessarily a sign of being born in the wrong body, but a very difficult reaction to growing up female in a world that often makes that hard. I also started to explore the role that my own internalised homophobia might have played, as I realised my attractions were towards women. I began to see that "feeling like a man" wasn't a real, tangible thing; it was just an idea I had latched onto. I learned that being a woman isn't something you feel, it's just something you are, and there's no wrong way to do it.

I benefited greatly from this kind of non-affirming therapy and support. It helped me separate my mental health struggles—like anxiety and depression—from the idea that I needed to change my body to fix them. A really helpful concept for me was learning about body neutrality. Instead of trying to love my body, which felt impossible, I learned to appreciate it for what it does. My body keeps me alive. It allows me to experience the world. Learning to be at peace with it, even after all the changes, has been a long but worthwhile journey.

Do I have regrets? Yes, I do. I regret that I wasn't given better information from the start. I regret the permanent changes I made to my body, especially the top surgery. I am now infertile because of the testosterone, and that is a real loss that I have to grieve. I don't believe my medical transition was the right path for me. I see now that I was trying to solve a deep-seated problem with a physical solution, and it didn't address the root causes, which were more about my mental state and my difficulties with accepting myself as a female person.

Here is a timeline of the major events as best as I remember them: