Happy Disability Pride Month to our disabled comrades!
khizuo
This is just my personal experience and definitely not universal to all trans people, but I developed a pretty good internal sense of gender even without HRT around a year or so after I first started questioning it. I had a lot of self-doubt at first (a lot of "am I doing this for attention" kind of thoughts) and also did some gender waffling, but it didn't last forever. I don't feel like my gender now is set in stone, exactly; I'm still discovering new things about myself and my transness all the time and I'm open to the idea that my experience or understanding of my gender may change in the future. But the things I discover about my gender now feel affirming to me; they don't send me mentally spiraling about whether I'm secretly cis or not, the way they might have in those first few chaotic months.
dissociation, depersonalization, depression/anxiety
I also dissociated from hexbear for several weeks and honestly I'm still a little bit out of it. And I also feel anxious about responding to people, not because of what people say but because of a combination of ADHD and social anxiety. RSD doesn't help either. I've dissociated from responding to multiple friends and comrades recently because I heavily depersonalized and then got severe anxiety about catching back up, even though I know the messages are probably nothing but supportive. It's a big issue with me.
Sorry, I hope this isn't too heavy of a response. Guess I just wanted to say... I hope you know you aren't alone. You don't need to feel pressure about responding to this comment either, I just wanted to say that I can relate to a lot of what you're discussing and that your experiences are valid. These things are tough
can't believe it's been over four years since I first came out as not cis I was one of the first people in my high school at the time to do it
Late thirties isn’t even old
Hollow Knight is surprisingly trans which I did not expect when I started playing.
story spoilers
When the main character (and its million siblings) were born without gender and never gain one throughout their lives, and they’re all made of void or something which is supposed to erase them of conscious thought and emotion but clearly doesn’t
Youngling here just to say: I love and support our older trans comrades
My mom today: "Hey my old university has a really good Marxism-Leninism department, you should go study there"
always a great day to say I LOVE BEING TRANS
breast talk! and some minor dysphoria discussion
I had very similar feelings for a while, and it’s only fairly recently that i’ve decided that i do in fact want top surgery (several years now into identifying as trans.) I haven’t started taking T yet, though I plan to soon in the future. for me, what I realized is that I liked the way I looked with breasts from an abstract aesthetic point of view but I didn’t feel connected to it. and like Estradoll, my experience with this stuff has changed throughout my experience of being trans. ofc this is just my own experience and idk how things are for you exactly. top surgery is definitely not required to pass as a man :)
So happy to hear this!