I’ve been struggling a lot lately with feelings of gender dysphoria. In suppressing feminine expression I feel like I have separated me from myself. I think that’s probably an odd thing to say seeing it written out here.
I feel like most of my life I’ve spent separated from myself–continually denying myself of a solid identity. Most of my motivation was fear of being called a girl. I was severely limited as a child there was a lot of different acceptable ways to be a boy but the version I had to take was bland. The other choices given were all very obviously not me. I didn’t really care about myself or how I looked. I knew it wasn’t normal but I was told it was low self-esteem. The fix was always losing weight to improve self-esteem to “be myself.” But I couldn’t care about myself enough to lose the weight.
I don’t know who I was supposed to be. Who people expected me to be. A phrase that was repeated a lot through my life experience was “you’re not like the other men.” Not sure who those “other men” were but I imagined one day someone would say that I was just like all the other men out of spite. When I think about grandma putting clothes that she picked out for me it was usually rebellious or dark in some way. I felt like I wanted to be bright–not like center of attention bright–just not dark. Not evil. Not mean. Not masculine. Those were my requirements for myself. Then there was peer pressure but make sure I don’t look like a girl.
What am I supposed to do now? If I want to transition then people will say that I’m not accepting myself as I am. But I feel like the person I am is the person stuck inside not the person you typically see before you.
Sure when I join a meeting with video my thoughts go to how stupid do I look to people? With my long feminine hair. With my pink headset. But when I look at myself in the mirror alone–and I have my long feminine hair I see a feminine face looking back–my heart fills with joy and hope. I have a longing in the heart that if I step in front of a full-body mirror I see a woman staring back at me. I always hated how I looked. But there were always parts that I liked–my eyes, my hair–and always thought they would look better if the feminine was brought out more. So the feeling in front of people must be internalized feelings, shame. They weren’t feelings that were self-imposed.
I don’t think I can write myself to the solutions. Maybe given enough time I’ll stumble on the answers. But for now I need to step away. I wish I could solve these problems for everyone. Probably a journey I tried to take on with religion that most definitely tanked. I can’t give everyone instructions on how to get somewhere when I don’t know where they are. I can’t meet everyone. Not everyone will accept my beliefs or my answers. And they could be on a different path in different terrain. It’s not for me to do.