My whole journey with this started when I was a teenager. I was really uncomfortable with my body when I hit puberty. I’m female, and I hated the development of my breasts; it felt completely wrong and foreign to me. I now believe a lot of this was tied to a deep-seated discomfort with puberty itself and some serious body image issues, rather than being about gender. I also struggled with depression and very low self-esteem, and I think I was looking for a way to escape those feelings.

I started identifying as non-binary first, which felt like a safer way to step away from being a woman. But that didn’t feel like enough, and I was heavily influenced by what I was seeing online and by friends in my social circle who were also transitioning. I eventually came to believe I was a trans man and started taking testosterone. I also had top surgery to remove my breasts.

For a while, I felt a sense of relief. I thought I had solved my problems. But the underlying issues—the depression, the anxiety, the feeling of not being good enough—never really went away. I started to realize that I had been running from myself. I had internalized a lot of homophobia; I think a part of me found it easier to be seen as a straight man than to be a masculine lesbian. I was trying to escape from my own sexuality.

My thoughts on gender have completely changed. I now see gender as a made-up ideology. Gender roles, like wearing certain clothes or having long hair, aren't what make a man or a woman; they're just stereotypes. I see now that encouraging feminine men or masculine women to transition is a loss of common sense. You are your sex, and whether you assimilate to societal expectations is a personal choice, not something that requires medical intervention.

I absolutely have regrets about my transition. I went through irreversible changes. The testosterone gave me a deeper voice and facial hair, and the top surgery removed a healthy part of my body. I am now infertile, which is a profound loss that I have to live with every day. I mourn the life I could have had if I had dealt with my trauma and self-esteem issues directly instead of trying to change my body.

Looking back, I can see how my thinking was confused. I was projecting my own struggles onto the world. I benefited greatly from therapy that was not affirming—therapy that finally helped me address my depression and anxiety instead of just telling me to transition. It helped me see that my problem was never that I was born in the wrong body, but that I had a lot of pain I needed to work through.