Written throughout the year 2025
I am trans. I have alluded to, and outright stated this fact in past entries. But this is the first entry I am doing that is explicitly about this part of me. My identity is something I am typically private about. I do not go around screaming to the world that I'm a woman now; I usually let people figure it out themselves or will make a passing remark about my identity. It's because fundamentally, being trans is an uncomfortable thing, especially if one's dysphoria is severe enough. Mine is.
The fear I hold for looking like a freak, a monster, or worse yet, a man, is near crippling. I live in fear of being called a "sir", despite its extreme rarity of occurence. In a sense, I am having to come to terms with the idea of actually succeeding at something.
At some point in the midst of all this, I realised that this was something I think I had always wanted.
And so I started thinking.
...how far does this go back?
When I was a young boy, I was bery androgynous. Baby-faced, small, frail, long-haired. I was happy. This was, of course, before everything went to shit in my life, so there may be a degree of bias here. But regardless, my androgyny was something I was happy with, and I never minded being mistaken for a girl. Perhaps it was just my neurodivergent mind not quite understanding concepts of gender at all. But I think even then, I was being taught the "masculine ideals" and found myself being repulsed by them. Still, I did not loathe my masculinity quite yet.
Then, my medical disorder happened.
Everything fell apart.
My disorder caused my diet as a child to be heavily restricted. For a time, I could not eat meat, cheese or bread. My diet was primarily composed of plain rice.
I was malnourished.
My growth was stunted.
Eventually I was put into a small christian private school in the second grade, after being homeschooled for previous grades. It was here that I was indoctrinated into the concepts of masculinity proper. Men don't cry. Men don't show their emotions.
There was a moment when I was around eight or nine, when an event happened on the playground occured, which reminded me of the medical issues I was experiencing, and I had a mental breakdown. I wept oceans, and my friend, who had accidentally made his friend cry, did all he knew to do; get the headmaster. The headmaster, having understood the situation, instead of trying to calm me down, decided to instead record my meltdown for the entertainment of others (yes, this did actually happen). My meltdown was not seen as acceptable for a boy like me to the other boys. So I was met with laughter at my pain. Only my girl classmates actually cared. I remember one of them from a few grades above me taking me up in her arms and comforting me. For the rest of my time at that school, I was met with the occasional reference of the video, which had now circulated throughout the whole school. I felt worthless. They pointed and laughed.
I spent five years in the private school, and it was within that school's confines that I dissociated behind the mask of a man. My development as a person halted almost entirely, with only a few breakthroughs.
In the 7th grade, I wondered how different life would be like were I born a girl. The thought occured randomly, and I excused the thoughts as mere experiments. But with hindsight, it is clear these thoughts were a refuge. Imagination