CW internalized transphobia, gender dysphoria
To be clear, I understand there’s no cutoff on the age of transition. But I swear to god I keep coming across this talking point made in the worst way possible. They’re trying to reassure young people who are insecure about having gone through their first puberty already but they’ll say some shit like, “I didn’t start transitioning until I was 24 and it still turned out well for me.” And you look at their before pictures and they were conventionally attractive and had other advantages like being transfemme with minimal natural body hair growth. Like goddamn that is not reassuring.
I first had signs that I wasn’t cis in high school. This was decades ago. I didn’t have the language to conceive of it back then. I had no hope of recognizing these feelings and acting on them.
I wish I had the knowledge that young people have now, and I wish I could have been able to present the way I wanted through my 20’s. I’m old and blown out now, and it gives me anxiety.
BUT, you gotta kill the gender cop in your head. You may look at these before pictures and say “wow, you looked Great!” But the people in the pictures most likely don’t feel that way. They like the way the look now regardless of the rough edges. Surely, they still feel that same dysphoria you’re feeling now, but they’ll always prefer how they are now to how they were.
So yeah, some of us missed our golden opportunity. We’ll never be young and hot, and our bodies have developed in ways that we don’t like. But, we gotta pull that trigger anyway, and we have to do it confidently. We’ll be better for it.
Thank you for sharing! Your confidence here is really inspiring :)