Honestly it is scary, but it depends on where you are. I boymoded for a really long time and eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to be myself and I said to myself “screw it, so what if I die” and so far people have been a lot nicer to me than expected. However, I am quite hypervigilant and I make sure to look out for and avoid people I think will give me trouble.
Sorry this ended up being longer than I expected, I might add a tldr in the morning lol.
For me, I had recently turned 16 years old and I was sitting in the library at school and then out of nowhere the thought that I am trans just appeared in the front of my mind. It was a very loud and persistent thought and it didn’t go away. I remember leaving the library that day and walking to class, and I finally noticed that I was envious of women. There were so many emotions going through my head, I felt scared, depressed, and confused for like the first 2 weeks. Everytime I saw a woman loads of thoughts and emotions flooded my head and it was very overwhelming.
After the first 2 weeks I started to accept myself, but I was still scared and depressed. One of first things I remember doing to expirement was shoddily photoshopping long hair and makeup on me, and being happy. I also shaved and made a few picrews as well. A few weeks later I bought some women’s clothes and I would wear them in my room at night, and that made me really happy as well. I was still super scared to come out and presenting masc most of the day made me very depressed. My mom noticed my smooth legs one day and critized them, but I don’t remember much else from that interaction.
I eventually decided to come out to one of my friends by sending them a meme and their first response scared me because they replied “No way, you can’t be serious” and then they followed it up with “I’m actually trans too” so that was a nice surprise even though she did not phrase that well. Shortly after that I decided to go to school with painted nails and my mom noticed and started asking me a million questions. Eventually she asked me if I was trans and I just looked at her and then she said “You are, aren’t you” and I gave a small nod. She then told me that she was proud of me and gave me a hug and I felt relieved. And then she proceeded to tell me a story that I don’t think is true about a trans woman she supposedly saw once, but she was essentially telling me with that story that if I transitioned I’d be ugly and never find love and that feeling of relief disappeared real quickly after that.
I still hadn’t come out to the rest of my family yet because of that weird reaction from my mom, and then covid happened and i started doing school online, which meant I could grow my hair out and not worry about the awkward phase. Shortly after my mom kind of pushed me to come out to my younger sister, which I felt kind of obligated to since she had recently came out herself as lesbian. So I texted her and I knew in the back of my mind that it’d probably be fine however I was still scared, but my sister was of course very accepting.
Nothing new happened for a while after that, but then my mom decided to tell my grandma and other family, but not my dad, I was upset she did that but fortunately they were accepting so it was actually relieving in a way since I was worried about doing it myself. A while later, I don’t remember how long, it could have been a few months to year my mom decided to tell my dad with me in the room and I was very upset and also scared. My dad’s reaction was “y’know some people don’t like that” and I was like “why do I care” and then he left the room. Fortunately, he never intentionally deadnamed me, but he still misgenders me pretty frequently, although I’ve noticed that he is gendering me correctly more frequently now that I have started hrt and voice training.
Oof, that sucks that you have to carry for protection. I live in Minnesota and I don’t carry anything for protection here as I feel pretty safe, although I’d never visit a rural area alone. It’s always alarming to me whenever I see a gun as I was raised in a very anti-gun environment and my only pro-gun view I have is that the left shouldn’t disarm themselves while the right is currently heavily armed. Because of that, I see conceal carry as an extreme measure to take, but I understand why you would be doing that if you are in Florida. I hope you are able to get out of Florida to somewhere safer.
Yeah I figured it would be rough but to me it still sounds a lot better than my old voice. And that is good advice for how to talk to her, thank you for the feedback.
I don’t know if this is the best way to do it, but when I started my pitch range was terrible so I decided to talk all the time in highest pitch voice I could comfortably do and it really wasn’t that much higher. I’ve been doing it for about a week and I can now go a lot higher than I used to. I’ve also noticed that while doing this my resonance moved up even though I wasn’t trying to, I’m thinking maybe I did it subconsciously or something. My voice still sounds masc though, but it is a lot closer to a femme voice than it used to be.
My changes have been happening really fast for some reason. I even had breast growth on week one and they are now a lot larger than what I’ve seen other people have at four months. When I did my first follow up, my doctor said my E levels were a lot higher than expected for the time I had been on it so idk what is up with me.
Reduced testicular volume means that the actual testes are going to shrink. I’ve been on hrt for about four months and mine have about halved in size.
Also your muscles are going to reduce. After being on hrt for a few weeks, I went to help my dad move a heavy armoire and I could barely make it budge. After that I decided to start working out, but I don’t have access to weights or a gym, so I’ve been doing pushups and I’ve definitely gotten stronger from them but I don’t think I’m as strong as I used to be yet.
You are valid and it is not a phase. Stay strong! You can overcome your dysphoria and live a happy life. I know how hard it is. There were times were I had lost pretty much all hope and felt miserable, but somehow I endured and now I’m in a much better place and I’ve never been happier and you can do it too!
I had those doubts too for a short while but then one day I woke up and saw her. I’m tall, although not hairy, and it used to bother me, until I realized that there are plenty of cis women who are also tall. There was a woman who used to come into where I worked and she was like 7 feet tall.
I don’t know what it is like to not have anyone who is supportive but I can imagine that it is very difficult. In my opinion, you should focus on what is going to make you happy. I think that starting back up on HRT would make you happy, or else you wouldn’t feel the way you do for stopping, and clearly you care or else you wouldn’t have made a post here. I think you should have a serious talk with your partner about it though. If they are unsupportive like you think, then you should probably separate. Your life is yours and you should live it for yourself and not anyone else.
Something that has helped me is this quote I heard Eric Andre say, “The people who mind don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t mind.” That singular quote has given me so much confidence in my life since I first heard it and I think it could be very useful to you as well