Greetings Gentlemen!
I'm a 32yo afab just confronting the possibility that I'm trans. Please excuse me if I say anything untoward; I have no idea what I'm doing. Also, sorry - this is a long one. Skip to the end (The Plan) for where *you* come in!
I've known I'm not cis for as long as I can remember, but only in the last couple years (thanks art twitter!) have I acquired the language to really start thinking about my identity. For about a year now I've been thinking of myself as genderfluid but now I'm beginning to think that's just a less scary compromise.
At this point I think I may be an agender/nb (predominantly gay) transmasc. I dunno if this is important, but I'm 5'5", 130lbs. If I transition I'm definitely going for a twink/twunk aesthetic.
The Signs:
~I'm male in the vast majority of my dreams (and waking up is a huge adjustment). This has *always* been the case.
~I have a strong preference for writing male characters, especially based on the me-in-my-dreams. A novel I'm working on for NaNoWriMo is actually what got me thinking about this. It's based on a dream that really stuck with me and the lead character (me in the dream) is a nonbinary pansexual male. As I'm writing him I keep thinking about how badly I want to *be* him (and its not like he has it easy). Prior to this particular novel, I was writing the script for a (completely nonsexual/nonromantic) comic where the two leads are a young girl and an older guy and I suuuuuper preferred writing the guy (who btw, is also going through an identity crisis, but not gender based).
~The vast majority of fictional characters that I relate to are male. I even got a tattoo to match my idol, Gene Starwind of Outlaw Star.
~When I masturbate, I almost always fantasize that I'm male (and usually gay). This has been the case for as long as I've known how to masturbate.
~One of my first genitalia-related memories was when I was maybe 7/8yo and saw my clitoris for the first time and I thought "Oh, that must be what's gonna grow into my penis!" (and I've been disappointed ever since that it never did.)
~I was "tomboy"/"one of the boys" all the way up until I started taking birth control. I was actually often more "boyish" than most of my male peers, which was (and still is) a *huge* point of pride for me. "I'm not like most girls." Until now I thought it was just internalized misogyny. I'm sure there's still a little of that to it, but now I'm thinking its because I'm not a girl and never was.
~Whatever her reasoning, my mom decided that 13yo was when she'd let me start defining myself - let me get whatever haircut I wanted, buy me whatever clothes I wanted (rather than relying on hand-me-downs from my female cousin). I went so hard into boyhood that I passed to anyone who hadn't known me before (and I was *thrilled* whenever someone addressed me as male). I suspect that if I'd known then that being trans was an option, I would've been quite sure I was a boy.
~When looking in the mirror I often think things like "Yeah, I'm hot, but how much hotter would I be if I was a guy?"
The Doubts:
~I like lots of "girl" things, like skirts/dresses, growing out & painting my nails (not really into face makeup tho), bright colors and patterns, cute stuff.
~I don't really experience body dysphoria very often. From time to time (especially when I'm writing, like now), I get some heavy duty penis envy, and sometimes my boobs are really irritating. Mostly I don't so much mind the body that I have - it's more so the one that I *don't* have that makes me feel like I lost the lottery.
~I'm worried about "ruining" my body if I opted for transitioning medically (and honestly considering the above ^ I kinda feel like there's no point in transitioning at all if I'm not gonna go the distance).
~Things are going really well in my female-presenting life, and I'm terrified of shaking that up. In particular, I have a great boyfriend who I've been with for 12 years and he's very much cis-het, so if I decided to transition our relationship would fundamentally change. I've told him about my suspicion and he's supportive, but yeah, I'm afraid I'll never find another one like him.
The Plan:
We're coming up on a new insurance year, so I'll probably wait until January to start looking into seeing a gender therapist. In the meantime:
In the little bit of cursory research I've done over the last couple weeks, there's a couple things that come up often, and that's experimenting and talking to other trans folks. So I hoped you all could help me out with that. I bought a binder and packer and am awaiting those in the mail. I've picked out a name that I'd like to try: Sylvain (Pronounced sihl-vuhn). I want to try out he/him pronouns. And I have a few questions!
1) How did you know you were trans?
2) If you were in a committed relationship when you transitioned, how did that work out?
3) For those of you who transitioned later in life, do you think that made transitioning harder or easier than maybe it would have been if you'd done it earlier?
4) In general, how is transitioning going for you? I know there's a lot of (mostly social) problems with transitioning, so would you say you're generally happier/better off or not so much?
5) Tips/tricks/things to look out for?
Submitted November 19, 2019 at 09:12PM by SylvainInMyDreams https://ift.tt/2KEWedI
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