Do you accept yourself and sometimes you can't?

You are a normal person. We are all normal

I used to get very depressed a few years ago when I was struggling the most with my gender identity. I even grew my facial hair out to try to be the man everyone wanted me to be. It ended up making me worse. I had days when I did accept myself but they were far and few between.

I have sorted out myself since then and I am generally a lot more happier. It seems like you have discovered a lot about yourself already and it might help if you look deeper down and keep exploring because the more you learn about yourself the easier it is to accept who you are.

 

Yes. Definitely!

It took me quite a while to finally be a peace with myself. While the majority of the time, I feel better about myself than I have in a while, I still have my days where it's like "why me?"

 

You can't change who you are. You can try, but you'll end up hurting yourself more.

So what do you do? You accept yourself for who you are.

Easier said than done? Definitely. But impossible? Definitely not.

I've talked to an older trans person and she assured me that, with trans issues, it does get better. So hang on there. (*hug*)

EDIT: I don't know how old you are, but for me, since I'm still in high school, I take my dysphoria and use it as something to push me to work harder. Transition is my goal, and it inspires me to do well in school so I can get a good job and finally live happily. Perhaps you can do this too.

 

I understand, and am the same way.

I spent a lot of time struggling and hating myself, trying to starve off any female attributes that I had, worried about how people perceived me, and even getting weirdly anxious and bothered when people referred to me as "she/her or that girl." I would cry in clothing stores because I never felt comfortable in whatever I was wearing and nothing felt right. I wore a lot of baggy men's t-shirts and jeans two sizes too big.

Years of that. My senior year was the worst - I told myself to shut up and start dressing like a girl - I grew my hair out long and stopped fretting over my feminine figure.

Only recently did I say :***: it. I was sick of pretending, pretending to be someone I'm not. I'm not a girl, even if I am female. I've always felt a large amount of jealousy towards people who aren't either gender, and don't look it. I love androgyny, and feel uncomfortable being labeled as either man or woman, because I'm neither.

Even if I'm not trans, it was a large step. Maybe it's not as big or as hard as what they have to go through, but I think it's better when you accept yourself. I still hate this figure of mine beyond belief. I still have days where it's just: "You shouldn't be doing this. Stop binding and grow your hair back out. You should be normal." But we are all normal, aren't we?

Sorry, I rambled a LOT, but um, you're not alone. :icon_redf

 

Sometimes I'm ok with myself and I feel ok about being trans but then sometimes I'm just filled with shame and sadness about it so I think I know what you mean. Stuff like that is hard to accept sometimes

 

I hated myself for 30ish years. I didn't know why or didn't accept it.

I still wish I were born different, or at least that I could have started transitioning earlier.

But then what is normal?

 

I tried to bury and forget my gender issues in grade school and they still were bothering me through my whole life. You aren't alone or weird in feeling the way you feel.

 

I still don't accept myself. Just this afternoon I was ready to pull the plug and only managed to curb my feelings by stabbing my arm with scissors :icon_sad: I have always hated myself and when I realized I was trans, I thought at least now I know why and I can do something about it. I thought that transitioning was the answer and would change the way I view myself. It has but not for the better. I'm just hating myself in a different way now than before so I understand how you're feeling. I don't really want to end my life because I don't see it as being my decision to make but as awful as it sounds, if it was my time to go I can't say I'd put up much of a fight. This life feels like some kind of punishment or torture. Who knows, perhaps it is.

 

I had it today on the bus home from work. I thought about having a vagina my whole life and wanted to die. The ideas that I'll never truly be what I intrinsically am, and that my personality has been influenced by my wrong body when it should have been influenced by my proper body, just made me want to be gone. It was horrible and is lingering.

 

Sometimes I worry that I am only a shadow of the person I should be. It is hard to try and move past that.

 

I know, it's horrible right? Sometimes I'll be sitting eating dinner at the table or trying to watch tv and all I can bloody think about is that I am sitting there with boobs and a vagina which I shouldn't even have. I get these horrible mental pictures of my body. It's like I'm being tormented when all I'm trying to do is do every day, normal things.

---------- Post added 29th Aug 2014 at 09:22 PM ----------

This too is so true. I feel as though I'm a shadow of the person I was and a shadow of the person I should have been. It's almost as though I don't exist at all since my whole existence itself was built on lies, a life that was chosen for me, by me even according to the biological sex of my body, not according to who I really am

 

Hi,
as others have said, actually to be different is to be 'normal' because there is a heck of a lot of variation within our human species, for eg different body shapes and sizes, different skin colour, etc, and it ought not be surprising that in the realm of sexuality / gender expression there is variation as well.

I'm bisexual, it would seem. I'm not comfortable with this, but I'm training myself to be kind to myself about it. I think that for many folks, this is actually a journey, accepting our particular sexuality, whatever part of the spectrum we fall into. It can take time, patience, and kindness - towards yourself. (*hug*) Just the other day I disliked the 'confusion' of feeling attracted to both sexes, and wished I could just be 'one or the other' - either straight, or gay. "It would be simpler, less confusing", so I thought to myself. So as you can see I have a challenging journey also, in fact lately it's been uncomfortable, but I just keep working at it (having a good counsellor helps immensely, and I do recommend this, if you don't already have one. Don't 'suffer in silence'; it is tremendously healing to just talk about these issues with a sympathetic professional who not only listens, but can also give little bits of helpful advice).

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex...and yes, Straight folks as well - we are all simply 'Humanity', that's it. All of these sexualities are equally 'valid' and 'normal' in the sense that they occur Naturally, in more individuals that we really know about (since lots of lgbti folks don't come out). To sum up: yes I know it can be tough sometimes being part of a minority in a predominantly (but not exclusively!) straight culture, but I'm going to say it: your sexuality / gender identity is beautiful, it's part of who you are. Accepting this fully is a journey, but I'm finding things do get better over time, even despite the occasional ups and downs.

 

I have random thoughts like these as well, they come out of nowhere, for the most part. Just a few days ago in class, I observed the guys sitting ahead of me, their facial hair, broad shoulders, the veins and hair on their arms and hands.. the smallest, most tedious of details, the things I lack that bother me the most. And I think about how different I am from them, not just physically, but my life experiences and how my biological sex set the blueprint for how I was supposed to be raised, socialised. I do feel like shit about it, actually felt quite suicidal about it recently but it's a fleeting feeling... because, the more I ponder it, I suppose I tend to make less of a big deal out of it over time. Sure, I'm trans, yeah I'd prefer to have been born biologically male but there's nothing I can do about it. At least I'm not alone, and I can take some comfort in that.

 

Ughhhhhhh....

Burying it.

I've tried my whole life. When I realized I couldn't, I realized I'm not just a close case cross dressing freak.

 

Somehow I knew that it was about being what I am physically not and that gave me, back then, a grief that I feared to ever express to others because I thought it was something that other people would not understand.

 

Yes, very much so. I have some days when I am okay with it, but other days when I say maybe I could like the opposite sex. I think the oddest part is when someone says you're gay. It is just odd because I am just me. I am human. I get hurt. When I have feelings for someone it is difficult to face because I have to kind of pinch myself at times to know that yes this is real. When others are talking about their relationship it can be tough-I am rather private. When people ask personal questions whom do not know I like girls it gets weird because they will ask me about my relations and I usually have nothing to say.

I just have the moments of why the hell did I get stuck like this? Why is it people have to question if I am gay; why not just let it be.

 

That's just it...

We have to make due with what we are. Life is unfair sometimes.