My whole journey with transition started from a place of deep discomfort and confusion. I never felt right in my body, especially during puberty. I'm female, and I hated developing breasts; it felt alien and wrong. I now see that a lot of this was tied to low self-esteem and a kind of body dysmorphia where I couldn't even recognize the person in the mirror. It was like looking at a stranger.

A huge part of my confusion was my sexuality. I am attracted to women, but for the longest time, I couldn't admit that to myself. I had a lot of internalized homophobia. Female attraction was a big deal for me because I subconsciously understood that attention from men felt different from attention from women. The idea of being a lesbian felt wrong to me, so my brain found another path. I became convinced I could be a gay man instead. I now realize this was a form of escapism.

I know now that my early and heavy exposure to porn warped my sense of self. I was only 7 or 8 when I first stumbled across it, and by 14, I felt I was too far gone. I was watching a lot of gay male porn from a first-person point of view, and I developed what I now understand are autoandrophilic tendencies—arousal at the idea of having a male body. For years, these cross-sex fantasies convinced me that I was supposed to be male. It’s only recently that those feelings have reduced in severity. Now, I find it difficult to achieve an orgasm watching that kind of porn because I am so acutely aware that I am female. I also got really into anime, especially harem animes and yaoi, and its really toxic portrayal of women and relationships was probably the icing on the cake for me.

I struggled with intense feelings of inadequacy. Deep down, I feared I wouldn't be able to please a partner as well as a man could. This anxiety fed into the desire to transition.

My turning point came from an unexpected place: psychedelic drugs, specifically mushrooms. During one trip, I looked in the mirror and for the first time, I didn't see a collection of undesirable features. I saw a whole person, and I remember thinking that the person in the mirror was beautiful and didn't deserve the hate I was giving them. I cried, and it was liberating. In another part of that experience, I saw myself as a frightened child and also as my older self. I knelt down, embraced my child self, and comforted her. It felt like warm arms around me, a million hugs all at once. I realized I needed closure on the events of my childhood and, most importantly, acceptance of my physical form. That experience was huge for me. It opened my eyes to how much hatred I direct toward myself and how much healing I still have to do.

I’m now detransitioning. I never took hormones or had surgery, but I did socially transition for a period. I'm learning to take baby steps. The moment my hair was long enough, I put extensions in. It's weird how I admire butch, gender-nonconforming looks on other women but couldn't extend the same courtesy to myself. I'm trying to unlearn that now.

I do have regrets about my transition. I regret the years I spent hating my body and trying to escape being a woman because I was uncomfortable with being a lesbian. I regret the influence porn and online communities had on me, leading me down a path that wasn't truly mine. I don't think transitioning was the right answer for me; the real answer was in dealing with my trauma, my self-hatred, and my internalized homophobia.

My thoughts on gender now are that for me, it was never really about gender. It was about trauma, sexuality, and a desperate need to escape from myself. I needed to learn how to be comfortable in my own skin, as a female, and to love other women without shame.