I get it, thanks. At first I didn’t want to watch it because I guess I was afraid it might reawaken something in me. But I guess that part of me wasn’t entirely asleep, because something pulled me to watch it.

And honestly, there’s a lot in her autobiographical section in the second half that I identified with. A lot of stuff from my childhood and adolescence, and stuff from my hatching/transitioning journey (even though mine was in my late twenties) and the self-doubt I felt at that time (I’ve always felt self-doubt, but I mean the sharpened self doubt of that particular time and the struggle of back-and-forth).

I mean, my first few months on HRT I felt more whole than at any other time in my life. Arguably the only other times I ever felt whole were the times when I was in relationships, but in retrospect I may have been using my girlfriends in a way as surrogates for my repressed femininity, living vicariously through them as they opened their inner worlds to me. I remember distinctly being obsessed with cuddles, being absolutely glued to my partners and still feeling like I wasn’t close enough. Looking back it felt more like I wanted to be absorbed into their bodies and become them. So I don’t know if I can really call that “wholeness,” even if I felt whole at the time. It was a codependency.

But when I started HRT, almost immediately I felt this internal shift. Like what I once depended on extrinsic factors for, I now had intrinsically. I didn’t feel this compulsive need to find a girlfriend anymore, because I didn’t need a surrogate to live vicariously through. I could be my own woman. And for the first time in long, grueling years of despair, I felt hope that I could live a better life. I felt complete in a way I never had before.

But unfortunately, life isn’t really so simple. I still lived in a conservative area where I was constantly invalidated (at best; I won’t go into the worst). I had no real queer friends so I relied on reddit forums mostly for camaraderie, but there was a lot of vocabulary I wasn’t familiar with so I wasn’t exactly accepted by everyone. But overall, I was able to connect with people, online strangers at least, in a way that I never had before, because I finally felt genuine. I was no longer pretending to be something I wasn’t.

But I couldn’t tune out my surroundings, and the imposter syndrome set in. A lot of constant micro-aggressions put me on the defensive, which made me look like the asshole to the people around me, and I started to feel like it too. I started doubting myself again. And I had been in a really rough time in my life leading up to the transition, which didn’t immediately go away at once, but obviously everyone had amnesia and acted like all my problems started when I started transitioning.

Also, I was getting my HRT from the government, which was fine before 47 got back in office. But a few times I was in residential therapy that were not designed for trans people at all, and honestly I think they swapped out my hormones with a placebo because my feelings of inner wholeness went away and my physical features began remasculinizing. I think they outright stopped giving me the andro-blockers, too.

So I backslid, and combined with the self-doubt and the gaslighting and the invalidation and the microaggressions and legal hurdles and lack of social support, eventually I started forgetting what it was like to finally wake up and realize the potential life I could live. I didn’t quite remember that again until watching the video in your link, except for maybe small quiet glimpses here and there that I quickly repressed, so thank you.

In the time that elapsed though, I became comfortable with just pretending to be a guy again (albeit a gender non-conforming guy and often perceived as a failure of a man), and even felt embarrassed about my “trans phase attempt.” So I don’t think I’ll go right back to transitioning. But maybe someday, if I finally get away from this poor provincial life, to a place that values self-determination and GNC, perhaps I might try again… perhaps…