Hello everyone, sorry for the lengthy post and possible english mistakes in advance, english is not my first language so I hope you can bear with me :) I hope I don't come across as rude or disrespectful, I'm still fairly new to the topic gender identity in general.
Context For almost 2 weeks I'm actively questioning my gender identity, after i watched some trans youtuber. Some of their feelings resonated with my and at several points I thought: "huh, that sounds familiar..." I'm 27 years old and AMAB, I've never really questioned my gender actively (Exclamation on "actively"). But in the past 2 weeks many memories I had almost forgotten resurfaced. But many of these experiences are from the time before my current 7 year relationship. So I'm not really sure if could trust those "distant" memories or if I am just warping them to fit my current interest. I hope you get what I mean. When I was a child I had been diagnosed with ADHD and from time to time i fall into a hyperfocus where I'm extremely interested in specific topics. I think i might suffer from a mild case of imposter syndrom. I have many accomplishments i should feel proud of (I have a fairly decent bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and am almost finished with my masters degree), but I always have the feeling I don't deserve them or am just more lucky than my peers. With these things out of the way:
Here are some of these experiences, with my instinctive responses These are in no particular order and I have even more saved in a .doc file :D
- Whenever I play a game i choose female instinctively, sometimes I don't even play a game if there's no female character the game is much less compelling to me.
- I think that's true for many cishet men, atleast 3 of my close friends tend to choose female characters too.
- I draw, but when I'm drawing characters I always want to draw women
- I guess that's also true for many cishet men (?)
- Eventhough I like to draw women and always wanted to draw myself as one, there was always some kind of barrier which prevented me from doing that...
- Last week I finally did it and somehow the picture gave me some... "interesting" feelings (almost like a longing?)
- When I have the feeling if another player in a mmo assumes that i'm female, it always feels kind of nice
- could be a roleplaying thing but i dunno...
- We have a Call of Cthulhu roleplaying group in which I'm playing a woman. Whenever I'm spoken to with female pronouns, referred to with her given name or if my character receives a compliment it feels really nice
- This year we had a murder mystery party where I played a women. I burrowed a nice dress from my girlfriend, put on some clip-on earrings and wore a pair of 6cm heels. I've felt surprisingly confident even more after i received some compliments from the female players for my appearance.
- Maybe the confidence boost came from the heels lol
- I've remembered in my last middle school year I went during the costume week in a dress from my mother and received some compliments then too and had similar feelings (11 years ago i think) and also felt weirdly confident
- I guess everyone likes to receive compliments?
- During high school my favourite manga which I read several times was a genderbender manga where the protagonist trasformed into a girl. I was kind of envious of the protagonist and was sad that I could never experience something like this. (8 years ago)
- That's a normal feeling among adolescents right?
- During my apprenticeship (7 years ago) one of the other apprentices said to my drivers license picture "You look like cute lesbian". In that moment I felt complimented
- Why would you even say something like that?! :D
- 8 years ago I played in the youth club of our local theater. Someday one of the others came out as Transmale. While always referred to him as male and respected his decision my instinctive thought was: "Why would anybody want to be a boy, they have nothing going for them".
- Later this year when I watched some trans women on youtube about there coming out stories my instinctive thought was: "Yep sounds absolutely logical! I get why you would want to transition"
- If I had the option to change my gender in an instant without any consequences i would do that.
- I guess that's quite the telling point, but the thing is, while I had these thoughts often during my time in school. Since my relationship the thought never (I think) came back to me. But my response to the question is still the same. Maybe it's just curiosity?
As already said, there are some more points, but I don't want to draw it out even further. I've also did my due diligence and read the gender dysphoria bible (which is fantastic open document imho) and there were a few points I could very much relate to, especially at the imposter syndrom chapter and the euphoria chapter... But the whole situation leaves my rather restless (and sleepless). Yesterday I confessed to my girlfriend about these feelings and she's been really supportive and awesome, which calmed me down a fair amount.
You almost reached the End! If you have any thoughts about any of these points please, please share them with me! And also, when did you "realise" you were transgender, were there points in your live where you didn't even thought about it or was it more of a constant nagging feeling? I can't even really tell why all this confusion surfaced like this with such strong emotions. Maybe because it never occured to me until recently that changing your gender is an active and possible choice you have, but maybe its just my ADHD lol.
Thank you very much for reading!
TL;DR: Got complicated feelings about resurfacing memories and am questioning my gender, please share your stories :)
Multiple of these points here do remind me of myself. Before I started questioning my gender many years ago, I felt like I had to be hyper-masculine, although being hyper-masculine made me feel depressed. I think it was because deep down I felt feminine yet society was telling me otherwise so I felt I needed to overcompensate masculinity to cancel out the femininity. I think that if I didn't have this hyper-masculinity, I would have realized that I am trans a lot sooner.
During this point in my life, I was so depressed I could hardly function. I got put on anti-depresants and I was happy for about 2 months. Then I went back to school in the fall and I started getting depressed again. It was then that I realized that I was envious of women and that it was making me depressed. Not long after that realization I started expirementing with my gender and I noticed that it was making me very happy and that being masculine was making me depressed so that is what led me to conclude that I am trans. Many years later and I am on HRT and I've never been happier.
Honestly I think the barrier to you not being able to draw yourself is that you are not ready to accept yourself as potentially being trans. Being trans, especially at first is very scary. There are so many new things to familiarize yourself with and on top of that you have to deal with people potentially being dickheads. Coming out is like taking a leap of faith, and hopefully you have supportive friends and family who will catch you or else you will smash into the ground and have to lift yourself up on your own. However, taking this leap is the best decision I ever made because I am so much happier now. I hope this didn't discourage you at all, it's just the reality of it, but I swear you will feel so much euphoria when you finally step out of your comfort zone and draw yourself as a woman. I know I did when I shoddily photoshopped long hair and makeup on me many years ago.
Hey Lumelore, it makes me extremely happy to know that you found yourself and are now happier than ever before! ❤ When I was little I had extremely low self esteem, for that reason (and bad eye-hand-coordination) I started Karate at 5 years, which gave me a significant boost in confidence in acting more like my usual weird me. So thankfully even when I was mocked for not being (or trying) to be especially masculine it didn't bother me too much. But maybe without 20 years of Karate lessons I would have reacted differently in the past.
Actually I did draw myself as women after a small (large) amount of loud sighs and nervosity (is that an english word?). And it made me feel really weird insight. When I was finished the feeling I got was a mixture of longing, confidence, warmth and a tiny bit of melancholy? Its hard to put in words.
Maybe I will share the picture with this community if am confident enough.
Thankfully I trust my friends to accept me even if I'm not cis. My family, even though they are all "boring" cishet people, is also very open and liberal in that matter, but it still makes me nervous especially when thinking about my brother which I have a good relationship with.
but for now:
Yeah it can take quite a while to figure yourself out. I was questioning for about a year to a year and a half after I had my realization, but the experiments I did with my gender were very helpful to me finally commiting to being trans. I never actually read the gender dysphoria bible at first, because I was afraid to accept myself and commit to being trans and then when I finally did accept myself I didn't need to read it anymore. Recently (like last month) I went and read it since so many people recommend it and it would have been a really helpful thing if I actually read it when I needed it lol.
Trust me, I also was extremely hesistant, but I'm glad I've read it. Regardless if i'm a man or a woman the document taught me some really important lessons and inspired me to do further self inspection. I think the part about assuming that being cis is the norm, is something many people should reflect upon, because there is really no reason for it being this way!
Tangential, but since you asked...
Turns out "nervosity" is a word in English. It's used so rarely, though, that I had to look it up to be sure. What you wrote was perfectly correct, but in that context, most people would probably say something like "nervousness" or "anxiety" (at least in my U.S.-centric experience).
For the record, having learned it, I now like "nervosity" better, and (unless I forget, which is likely) intend to start using it.
I guess I learned something new today :D thanks!