God that's so real. I'm like almost 4 or 5 years on HRT myself and I remember when I started, seeing people post timelines and feeling so much like anxious hope looking forward to seeing so much change. And now I'm where they were or further and I look at myself and so often I just see a slightly older and softer version of the same person with the same face and the same build... and yeah sometimes it feels like I drew the short stick there. for some people, looking in, it seems like it happens so fast and effortlessly. But logically I know that isn't necessarily true. That they're probably only showing their best and editing out the rest, and that they probably feel the same way about themselves at least sometimes, and that largely we're all in the same boat in terms of the ideas about gender and sex that we're surrounded by and ultimately internalize. But it's cold comfort when I still feel, inadequate I guess? In my own head I still feel less "real" than them somehow. But yeah, that definitely isn't just a you thing.

I think part of it might be that online trans spaces can skew kinda young, both in age and in like transition time. I think a lot of the older people might end up feeling similar to us and just leaving, maybe with better real life support networks than they had when they first started and needed to find that online.