My whole journey with gender started when I was a teenager. I was deeply uncomfortable with my body, especially when I went through puberty and developed breasts. I hated them; they felt foreign and wrong on me. I think a lot of this came from a place of low self-esteem and anxiety about growing up and becoming a woman. I also struggled with depression and used the internet as a form of escapism, where I found communities that seemed to have all the answers.

I started identifying as non-binary first. It felt like a safer way to step away from being a woman without having to fully commit to being a man. But eventually, I felt pressured, both by online spaces and by friends in the community, to take things further. I felt like I had to have a clear, medicalized transition to be taken seriously or to be valid. I started testosterone. I was so convinced it was the right path, the only way to fix the deep discomfort I felt.

For a while, it felt good. I liked the changes at first. But the underlying issues—the depression, the anxiety, the feeling that I was fundamentally broken—never went away. I started to realize I had made a huge mistake. I had been so sure that changing my body would change my life, but it didn't solve my problems. I began to regret transitioning.

I stopped taking hormones. I started to understand that a lot of my drive to transition was tangled up with other things. I think I had a form of body dysmorphia, where I was hyper-focused on parts of my body I disliked. I also had to confront internalized homophobia; I think part of me was uncomfortable with the idea of being a lesbian and saw becoming a man as an escape from that.

I benefited immensely from finding a good therapist who didn't just affirm my desire to transition but helped me untangle why I felt that way. We worked on my negative body image and my overall mental health. That non-affirming therapy was crucial for me. It helped me see that my problems were psychological, not something that could be fixed with hormones or surgery.

I don't identify as trans anymore. I am a woman, and I'm learning to be okay with that. I have serious regrets about taking testosterone. I'm now infertile, and that is a profound loss that I have to live with every day. I mourn the fact that I will never be a mom. My parents' disapproval also weighs heavily on me.

My thoughts on gender now are that it's a very complex thing, and medical transition is presented as a solution far too quickly. For people like me, who have underlying trauma, anxiety, or other mental health struggles, it can be a way to run from our problems instead of facing them. I worry that online communities can be an echo chamber that pushes people down a path without encouraging them to really examine their motives.

Here is a timeline of my journey: