I mean personally, I'm leaning towards thinking detransition is a healthier option for most, but as far as looks I actually also thought you were just a dysphoric tomboyish looking FTMTF who didn't think she looked like a woman. Regardless, the biggest issue I found with transition was that at its core, I had to reject myself. And that was super unhealthy.

So basically what you describe is projection. Most trans people know deep down what we're doing or did to ourselves is freakish and often has undertones of hell/banishment themes. Anything they said to you, that's what they really feel about themselves if they let a crack through the trans ideology for a second. You have to understand internet stuff isn't about you personally, even real life this is often the case. It's a reflection of their inner image.

You have autism like many in this community?

For most people, telling you something honest that would make you feel bad activates mirror neurons which in turn hurt them. Neurotypicals automatically internally generate the emotions they expect another person is probably feeling, even when imaging a predicted scenario. Now you may or may not actually feel the emotions they're predicting as they're imagining the most likely emotional reaction. It's not useful to blame them for it or see it them as trying to undermine you, this is naturally how the average person's brain works with regards to what we call affective empathy. This helps them in a lot of ways socially (and by extension helps us too as they often pick up our slack in this area) and causes your conundrum. So when you're asking people close to you this question, if they have normal empathy, you're basically asking them to hurt themself if you want them to be honest.

It would be better to ask someone who doesn't know you well. Maybe even better if they're trained in voice stuff like a speech therapist or voice coach. Or at least an impartial stranger who doesn't care one way or another about you.

I'm sorry, you're real. And you're not the only one this shit has happened to.

Do you have food and shelter? Do you have income?

Are you connected to any family or friends? More likely the people who know you in real life will help you. Internet strangers will generally only help so far.

Do you have anyone seeing you for pain management so at least you have more space to think about what to do? Opioids can be really dangerous, but chronic disabling pain isn't exactly a good option either. My mom lived with chronic pain, but gained a high pain tolerance and it became bearable enough to withstand day to day without opiods. She was a nurse and saw tons of her physical rehab patients lose themselves to opioids.

I detransitioned for several reasons: one of them being that I iddn't like how people treated me for beng trans. But also I see now what they were reacting to was not being cool with me being clearly severely mentally ill. I also detransitioned because I realized why I actually transitioned in the first place. My life s absolutely way better now. Though I will say I often feel depressed, by most measures, I'm living a far healthier and whole life. I think I still feel bad though because it's a crappy feeling to realize why I transitioned and regret all the years I speny living that way. And taking testosterone was a huge mood booster chemically.

I detransitioned, actually have decided to embrace being a woman this time instead of butc or not quite as woman as other women, and now people actually care about me as a person, I got a great new job that pays more than ever, people actually want to interact with me, and I actually care about taking care of my body and health because detransition turned out to be the true act of self love, transition was never embracing autewnticity, it was self harm disguised as bravery.

I've had mixed results. SOme people get really uncomfortable and stay away or just react badly.

An alternative is to just say you're a woman. If you really want to explain, make something plausible up like it's a cold, or PCOS (female hormonal issue). But there's a ton of women with deep voices and they generally do not explain that they're women.

Unless your art is selling for hundreds+ and only takes a day or two to make, working minimum wage may net you more.

What else are you doing for the chronic pain? Sounds like that probably takes a huge chunk of your spoons with little else left to focus on.

Have you tried low dose naltrexone? LDN works in the opposite manner of regular dose opioids. Chronic use of regular or high dose opioids cause the receptors to lower in number which is why the substance works less and less over time. LDN works by being such a small amount it causes receptors to actually increase. Meaning regular opioids or actually just your body's natural opioids do a better job of managing pain since you have more receptors, or maybe more sensitive receptors? I'm not a doctor, but this looked like a promising therapy for my chronic pain friend.

Gotcha. I feel you on missing connection to other women. In the past few months I started "passing" as a woman again and I truly hadn't realized how vastly different my everyday social experience had become. You get used to being mostly left to your own devices as a man. A man's life is often lonely unless one is very socially motivated or outgoing. As a formerly very shy woman, I'm really glad to have been female to start out life because people are friendlier as a baseline.

Early in transition once I was passing as a man it really sucked not having butch and queer women able to identify me anymore, unless I was in a largely queer space. Even there I often passed too well as a man.

I'm glad to hear you found a way to manage dysphoria or just live with it as a normal part of life. That's what it means to become a woman, in our case as queer woman. It's growing up. The answer to gender dysphoria for so many of us seems like it was that it's actually relatively normal when looked at, at scale, and not something that needs fixing.

I'm not quite understanding what you eventually learned to cause you to detransition? What you're describing sounds closer to what I'd describe as legit sex dysphoria around gendered body parts. I couldn't tell if you were saying that you found out later you actually had a totally different issue but that was your rationalization at the time for transitioning?