I'm not sure if this is normal. Can anyone relate?..... I have been gender dysphoric for 2 years now. Questioning my gender came from trying to come to terms with my sexual orientation and realising I didn't feel right with my body when I thought about sex. At first, although I felt like I should be a guy it was weird because nothing about me apart from my sexuality made me think I was so I kind of had 2 opposing aspects of myself that conflicted each other. The male part of me was my sexuality but aside from that, I felt female. As time went on the male part grew stronger and kind of overpowered the female part and I started to feel dysphoric about more and more things until I realised that I felt I should be male full time. This brings me to the bit I don't understand. With this realisation, I have changed a lot as a person. The things I used to enjoy don't feel right for me any more so I've stopped doing them. Since letting go of the old me, I have lost all sense of who I am. I don't know what I like, what I want to do, who I want to be and who I really am. I have also lost connection with things like my age and the skills and abilities I have acquired throughout my life. Is this normal?
I think one thing you should keep in mind is that it really doesn't matter if it's normal, the fact is, it's happened anyway. I mean realistically, if you find out that this isn't normal, what are you going to do? Force yourself to do those things again and force yourself to think like a girl? I advised against throwing yourself face first into alpha-male mode, and the same goes for throwing yourself into girl mode. Have you ever noticed how many threads we get around here asking how to be more feminine or masculine? It seems a common first reaction is to try and prove to ourselves that we actually are who we say we are. When I first found myself my first thought was that I had to wear make-up. I now own make-up I will never, ever used. Now for most people, what follows is the coming out stage where it all flares back up again because we feel we need to convince people. When I got to that stage I had mum plucking my eyebrows because she said it looked wrong. I HATE plucking my eyebrows, but I did it anyway because I felt I needed to convince her. Now after that we find it usually calms down in people whose transition is going well. In my case, most people have been OK and I'm slowly returning to my normal habits. Note: I cannot wear trousers currently because it feels to masculine, so even I'm not back to 'normal' as it were. Then we have the people (like you) who don't have it as easy in terms of acceptance. Now you constantly have pressure from your family to be the woman they want you to be, and when they don't get that they take the piss out of you for not being enough of a man. You've told us repeatedly that your mum uses your old hobbies as proof that you are in fact, not a man. So now you are trying to prove to yourself and your family that you are who you say you are because the bastards just won't even pretend like they believe you. Thing is, I don't think most people would ever find their way back to their old hobbies in that environment. Once you don't have to 'prove' yourself anymore I think you will find your way back to YOU, but until your mum stops being a complete arse you're stuck in between who she wants you to be and this random man we don't know.
i went through a voyage of self rediscovery, when i stopped trying to be someone i'm not. it was scary but fun to find my authentic self.
Holly, I read your reply earlier and have been thinking it over and setnyx I think you're right about it being a period of self rediscovery. Maybe I am worrying too much about how I have changed in the last two years because it has been a VERY dramatic shift in my personality. You know the stories about people developing childhood hobbies into careers? Like my brother for example. As a kid he was always in the garden playing with bugs. Then he got interested in trees and plants and studied that at college and he's now a landscape gardener. In many ways he's not really changed as a person. He's just got older, acquired more experiences and grown as a person. This is the type of journey through life that I think I should have experienced but instead, I reached the age of 24 and started realising I wasn't the person I thought I was. My life collapsed and is still in ruins and I don't even know where to start with building the new me as a guy. When I was thinking earlier about my old hobbies, I realised that the reason I became so engrossed in them in the first place was because I was being bullied at school and retreated into my own world of music and art. Yes I did enjoy those things and I keep feeling like I should still be doing them. They were my hobbies. But maybe they were just things I don't need any more. Maybe I was using them to cover up the things that were bothering me like my ED once did. I don't remember how or why I really started not eating but it became an obsession that took up all of my thoughts and so I didn't have space to think about anything else.
You will often see floating around the internet a text piece that is usually called something like "Advice my father gave me" or something and one of the entries reads like this: Find something you love and figure out a way to make money out of it. Now this hits home for a lot of people because in an ideal world we would all do it. But in reality, this happens to almost nobody. Your brother is one of the few who has managed to do something with it. Take me for example. My interests have cycled since birth. History -> Music ->Philosophy -> Languages These four things I've always had some interest in, tried at different times and then ultimately given up on. The thing is, finding something we love and figuring out how to make money from it is a lovely idea, we would all love to get paid to do something that doesn't feel like work, but it isn't realistic. I mean the world literally could not function in it's current state if everyone did that. But ignoring the economics of it, people just don't work that way most of the time. You know we all have those moments when we realise we aren't who we thought we were going to be. I'm going to write some ages down and then what I would have told you I would be at age 23 after each of them. 4 - Archaeologist 8 - Musician 12 - Historian 14 - Student 16 - Dead 18 - Audio engineer for musicals 20 - Historical weapons expert 21 - Teacher 22 - Dead Now I'm none of those things. Honestly, it's horrible sometimes to think about how I was so sure that I would be this, that or the other at any given time only to look at what I am today. It sucks. But there comes a point where you have to stop trying to fit with some big plan. Life throws things at you and changes things. You know what that change feels like, it can be small, it can be massive, and it can be really scary. But what's the point of sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves because at age whatever we haven't managed to live up to what we thought as children? Do you think as children, even though we were bullied we thought that life would throw the things its thrown at as? Hell no, everyone said it gets better. It does get better, but not in the obvious ways people used to tell you it would. Explore things and let yourself become what feels right to you.
