I want to figure myself out finally

[Blake]

-TW: Tough talk-

Ok everyone who is reading this, this will be a long post, but I finally am in a good place to have this conversation. 

I know full well that I am aro and ace, no doubt in my mind at all. So my sexual and romantic identity are check. Now, my gender identity has always been a conversation that I avoided having with myself. This is my safe space and I trust everyone here enough to ask for advice.

First, I know that I am the only one with the answer, but that doesn't mean I want to know outside opinions so I can deconstruct it and get to my own conclusions. I am a scientist and I believe in experimentation

Second, I have age majority so I can see a therapist (which I will do when I find one that is trustworthy and have expertise in queer clients). This means for me that I have a household to go, or I can find one if things don't go the way I want them to go.

Third, I am looking for a job that pays me well for having a bachelor degree so I can get money for my masters, so currently unemployed but not for long since I put my grown up pants on and will begin looking for jobs tomorrow 8am.

Now for the issue at hand: my gender identity. I don't love myself, I don't love my body since I had 12 years, and I am now on mid twenties. That is a little over half my life not loving what I see in the mirror. However, I tried to remedy it by doing excercises, taking martial arts, running 5km daily. It helped, i got fit, i could see myself in a mirror at least or when bathing. But the thing was that I wasn't satisfied.

I yearned to be in a female body, have boobs, a vagina, uterus, long hair, use makeup. But I couldn't. I could not have those things at 12 years old. The reason was my father and the culture I was raised in. It ingrained in me that I was a man. That being a women was being inferior. I won't speak of my childhood more, just that it wasn't an ideal environment for me to be myself. So I chose to not be myself and be what my parents (my father in particular) wanted me to be.

Just like that, I repressed a part of me. It was in order to survive in the environment I was being raised. The other option was to embrace myself and let all hell break out and maybe be disown at 15 years old and be in the streets. Idk, that is the route I did not choose so I can only speculate. The point being that I shut down myself to act like the person my family wanted me to be. 

Now, at 22-23 I realized I was aro and at 24 that I was ace. My gender identity was "men" till 18 and when I went to college I started opening myself more to labels and chose androgynous. The reason being that I did not feel like a man, but also I could not be a women, cuz I wasn't born one. (I know that this is a simplistic way of thinking but it was what I thought at the moment)

I knew I wasn't really a man. I could not be a women, so that left me with the middle (if we see it as binary), and for a while that worked out. But now, after having some time outside of the influences of my parents (9 months) I began working out with my gender identity. The thing is that I do not know if I should say I am transgender. For fear of giving bad stereotypes, or realizing I wasn't and if I started speaking about it and then I said I wasn't ot would be hell for me cuz then everything will be said that I was "in a phase; I would grow out of it; etc" and that is not the purpose. I want to be 1000% sure before speaking it out loud to anyone close to me. I want to be confident, and speak with facts, with hard boiled truth without a grain of clumsiness.

I will see a therapist and speak about this in the near future, but I want advice on how to know if I would be trans or not.

This leads to the second issue: Because I do not like the binary at all, I would be non-binary trans, and that is something I have zero experience with. So anyone who can tell me how that would work and I can explain it without recurring to the internet I will be grateful. 

I would be amab: assigned male at birth. If anything. So I would be an aroace non-binary trans??? Idk... I don't want to speak it to anyone for fear of rejection. I am begging to shave all days to see if I can make my shadow beard dissapear naturally. I am letting my hair be shoulder lenght. Will buy some makeup to put my face more androgynous or even maybe femenine. I will surely experiment with myself since I am now in a good environment, but I wanted to know the opinions from anyone here. 

Thanks for reading and o/  <---(this is a waving person)

 

 

[Just a Bear]

I'll tell you about my experience. 

 

When I was a teen, I wanted to be a girl. I had fantasies of being a girl. But I didn't know transgender was a thing, so I thought it wasn't something important and thought that I was a guy so I did guy things and never knew. 

 

When I found Aven, my gender got put into question. after some questioning, I decided that I was female, and transgender, and came out to my parents. I was nervous about it. It was a new identity for me, and I didn't know what to think. I eventually started wearing women's clothing and living as a woman, but I was shy about it so I wore adrogenous leaning clothing. 

Now as I lived as a girl I learned things about myself. I had this idea in my head that I'd wear makeup, but I never got around to it. I realized that I had no motivation to wear makeup. If I had been born a girl, I wouldn't have worn makeup.

I kept thinking about wearing more feminine clothing, but I was too shy to do it. If I was a girl I'd do it, but I didn't feel like a girl. I was always seen as male by strangers, and didn't want any conflict by people being confused about my gender. And my body didn't match my gender, and that weighed heavy on me.

I thought about surgery, my idea was that I didn't want sex so I didn't want an artificial vagina because you have to work to maintain it (dilaters, you insert it to keep the vagina's shape) and if I'm not having sex I don't want one. But when I talked to the surgeon I got weirded out by her personality. So that idea was put on hold.

I thought about changing my voice, but again I lacked the motivation to do it. I felt like if I had to fake my voice, it wasn't really me. I wanted to change my voice anyway, I was willing to have a "fake" so to speak voice, (it isn't really fake, I just felt that way), but I lacked the motivation to get started and I put it on hold.

I continued as I was and started to feel more and more depressed. I was always depressed throughout my life, though I didn't understand that was what I was. I always had an idea in my head that I could leave and go west and start over if things got bad, and I did that, I left town and moved in with a friend and started over and started building a life. But I got really depressed, and having gone west already, that wasn't an option anymore. it got to the point that I wanted to kill myself. I went to the hospital for two weeks. 

I discovered that I was depressed because I wasn't a girl. I thought about everything, about how I didn't wear femininte clothing, didn't wear makeup, didn't want facial feminization surgery, (ffs) didn't want surgery in general, didn't have the motivation to practice a feminine voice, and realized, that being a girl wasn't something that would work out. I wasn't going to feel like a girl becauase my body and behavior wasn't feminine, and I wasn't going to be seen as a girl by strangers. I felt so depressed. 

I remembered back in college when I thought I was a guy and identified as a guy and was happy, I was actually not very depressed when in college, and realized that I could be happy as a guy, so I decided to stop identifying as a girl and stop wearing girl's clothes and to identify as male or maybe androgenous. And I did that. And I was depressed because I couldn't be a girl, but after about a year and a half that depression lifted. I'm still depressed, but it's very manageable, like it was in college I guess, it's much less than it was, and I'm content living life as a genderless "male" person. my depression is for other reasons now. My dysphoria stopped, because I accept my body as it is.

 

 

 

 

So because of my experience, what I have to say is that you gotta want to go through the motions of transition if you are going to transition. FTM are lucky because testosterone gives them masculine features, but MTF don't have that. They grow small boobs, and that's it. There's some fat redistribution, but it doesn't give you a feminine curve. MTF are stuck with their body unless they go through surgery. 

 

So if you want FFS, want to change your voice, want to wear feminine clothing, want to wear makeup, it's going to work out for you. if you already look feminine, it's going to work out for you. but If the song and dance isn't something you want, it'll be difficult to do. So my advice is to only get the idea in your head of changing your body to female if it's something you're willing and able to do. otherwise, getting the idea of change will be depressing. But I could be wrong, maybe minimal changes make you happy. 

 

What I can say is, I'm happy I have boobs. they may be small, but they feel like they belong. I'm happy on estrogen because it feels right in my body. I am still trans, but I don't identify as female, I identify as nonbinary. Being trans for me is wishing I had been born a female. But I wasn't, and medical transition isn't healthy for me, so I'm a "male" as far as any strangers are concerned, and I'm able to operate as a nonbinary guyish person and it doesn't make me depressed. 

 

 

 

 

It sounds like your body is making you depressed. It sounds like you wish you were born a girl. I think it's safe to say you're trans. If you want to go down that path, research it like crazy, learn what you need to do to be female and be confident that you want to go through the motions. But if that won't make you feel like a woman, or it isn't something you want to do, then don't do it. It's only worth it if it makes you feel like a woman and you can identify as a woman. It's okay to be a "guy" even though you wish different. It's up to you exactly how far you want to go with transition. And your identity is what fits you, not the other way around. If you're androgenous "guy", identify as nonbinary or agender or demiguy or something along those lines. If you're not that, and you want to transition, take the time to get confortable with it, take it as slow as you need to go, and identify as a transwoman. It'll take time to see the chanes, but if it's what you want to do, it will be worth it. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what you want to do. I don't know if my advice is helpful. I hope my story helped you out too. Best of luck, and I hope you can find acceptance and find what gender you are. 

[Blake]

This is what I was looking for, your opinion, and you gave it. Thanks a lot, anybody else is welcome to comment. I want to collect all data from sources first before making a decision, but thanks a lot @Ashe.. I know that whatever I choose, it will be well researched and I will make sure to have a group of people to help me along the way, I will be making all decisions but in this topic, I will ask for help because is something I know I cannot do alone.