I feel super fucking bad for arguing about this and i don't want to invalidate your pain here, but ... idk, it's exactly the other way round for me. Or maybe i just have different words for it, and we're actually on the same page here, but i need to share this. So sorry in advance if i come off argumentative or contrarian. I'm not, i mean you no harm, and i am not interested in calling your view of being trans into question, i just want to contribute my own.
The fact that i always was a girl, but couldn't understand myself as one and live as one explains most of the pain, trauma, relationship disasters and other life failures i've had to endure. My entire biography doesn't make any sense at all if i assume otherwise, i can only view what's behind me and who i am as a coherent whole when i accept the fact that i've always been a girl. No, not physically, but that doesn't determine who i am. Girl isn't a biological term describing a human body, it's a psychosocial category, an identity and finally a way to view and understand myself. The entire incongruence / dysphoria follows from the fact that i'm a girl, but in spite of that didn't get born with a sufficiently female body to safely harbor that identity and make it recognized by others, and the way i'm slowly fighting my way out of that is to alter my body to the point where it fits these needs and where that scared, angry, sad girl that was trapped inside me for all these decades and now finally has come out can grow up to be the woman i always should have been.
yeah, def how i conceptualize it too. plus there were just too many 'oh fuck' moments from my youth, like remembering asking teachers about what happens if i were to take estrogen or insisting to my mom that i was a girl many times. honestly its a little more of a depressing conceptualization, a lot of people fail you, especially as a kid, over many decades because they didnt read the obvious writing on the wall
It never was that obvious for me, the picture only became clear in hindsight when i found the last missing puzzle pieces. But yes, almost every trans person i know could've known earlier, could've been helped earlier. Even today, when knowledge is so widespread that a ton of us realize who they are during puberty, i see so many of us that get failed by their parents, their schools, the medical system.
I feel super fucking bad for arguing about this and i don't want to invalidate your pain here, but ... idk, it's exactly the other way round for me. Or maybe i just have different words for it, and we're actually on the same page here, but i need to share this. So sorry in advance if i come off argumentative or contrarian. I'm not, i mean you no harm, and i am not interested in calling your view of being trans into question, i just want to contribute my own.
The fact that i always was a girl, but couldn't understand myself as one and live as one explains most of the pain, trauma, relationship disasters and other life failures i've had to endure. My entire biography doesn't make any sense at all if i assume otherwise, i can only view what's behind me and who i am as a coherent whole when i accept the fact that i've always been a girl. No, not physically, but that doesn't determine who i am. Girl isn't a biological term describing a human body, it's a psychosocial category, an identity and finally a way to view and understand myself. The entire incongruence / dysphoria follows from the fact that i'm a girl, but in spite of that didn't get born with a sufficiently female body to safely harbor that identity and make it recognized by others, and the way i'm slowly fighting my way out of that is to alter my body to the point where it fits these needs and where that scared, angry, sad girl that was trapped inside me for all these decades and now finally has come out can grow up to be the woman i always should have been.
yeah, def how i conceptualize it too. plus there were just too many 'oh fuck' moments from my youth, like remembering asking teachers about what happens if i were to take estrogen or insisting to my mom that i was a girl many times. honestly its a little more of a depressing conceptualization, a lot of people fail you, especially as a kid, over many decades because they didnt read the obvious writing on the wall
It never was that obvious for me, the picture only became clear in hindsight when i found the last missing puzzle pieces. But yes, almost every trans person i know could've known earlier, could've been helped earlier. Even today, when knowledge is so widespread that a ton of us realize who they are during puberty, i see so many of us that get failed by their parents, their schools, the medical system.
We grieve the lives that were stolen from us in different ways I suppose.
Whatever helps us make it through.