Am I not trans anymore?
Hey all, 18(f, m? I don’t know) amab, I’ve been questioning my gender for the past two months or so, and I went as far as getting on hrt. I’ve been taking estrogen injections for the past two weeks now.
Before I started estrogen, being a girl was all I could think about every single day. Whenever I did my makeup I felt so so happy and euphoric, whenever someone would call me my preferred name the same would happen.
But as soon as I got on estrogen, or after about a week or so, most of the desire to be a girl seemed to have just disappeared. Now I’m on a walk and I’m feeling more like a boy.
I’m worried I might be making a mistake by being on hrt. It’s such a big decision that I don’t know if I’m developed enough to be making. Some more doubt also comes from the fact that this realization came kinda out of nowhere, along with the dysphoria. People calling me a girl by mistake in the past made me really happy sure, and sometimes I’d think about how nice it’d be to be a ginger girl instead of a ginger guy, but those were very subconscious background thoughts. And I only really starting having intense dysphoria about things when I realized I might be trans. That makes me worried I’m just trying to fit into some idealized idea of what a girl is I created in my head, and it’s not dysphoria, it’s just anxiety about that.
I was always mostly indifferent to being a guy until now, now theres some aspects I enjoy like having a brother, and feeling like a brother, but at the same time, I hate when my dad calls me “son”??? I don’t know what’s going on.
I was so sure I was a girl before that it genuinely gave me afraid of dying, I went on a plane and was genuinely so anxious it would crash and then I wouldn’t get to go home and be a girl (I was starting hrt when I got back from my trip) I love when people call me a girl or use feminine pet names or compliments, I love painting my nails.
I don’t know what to think anymore though because I’ve just been so much less certain then I was before. Especially counting the fact that this was all so sudden. But at the same time, I keep looking for ways to “fix” this feeling so I can go back to being okay with being a girl. I barely know what I’m feeling anymore it’s so hard tell. Is it possible I stopped being trans?
Lots of familiar notes being struck here:
Distress over his body followed his trans revelation, rather than preceding it. (As he notes in the comments, the idea that he might be trans made him start “noticing everything masculine about me, I kept shaving what little facial hair I had over and over and hated my wide ribcage and brow bone.”)
The high (crazy-making) degree of self-surveillance, keeping close tabs on his ever-fluctuating inner sense of gender (on a walk, he feels “more like a boy”).
The desperate urgency he felt to transition as soon as possible.
He’s a ginger. (I’m kidding!)
He started questioning his gender just two months ago. (So every declaration like “Before I started estrogen, being a girl was all I could think about every single day” needs to be appended with “for two months.”) He started on estrogen within weeks of that lightning-bolt revelation.
Then, just as suddenly as his trans feelings appeared, they evaporated. It’s possible estrogen depressed his sex drive and thus sapped his motivation to transition. Maybe actually starting hormones—rather than just imagining the transformation in store for him—took the thrill off when nothing magical happened.
