Why doesn't it work anymore (to live as a girl)?

It snowballs.

Maybe like me you got to that age where now you're living out your life, and realizing something was missing or didn't feel right. As time went on it got stronger and stronger and now with 1/3 - 1/4 of a life finished we're focusing on the rest.

I literally went from having dysphoria and issues but coping to crying all the time and losing my sanity.

 

I was pretty much like you. It actually never worked. I never felt like my life was mine. I didn't really care about anything. I felt really detatched from my body and everything else and had no clue what I wanted. I became alcoholic too without noticing that I drunk too much. I was so used to everything being a bit wrong that I didn't really think about it. I didn't have much feelings either after all.

I went to therapy and started noticing how everything actually sucked and that I finally gave in and started thinking about transitioning. Now I see how bad things were. I could never live as a girl again. It would be torture.

Maybe things didn't really work for you either. Sounds like that. You have realized that you don't want to live like that and now it' impossible.

 

One gets tired of putting on an act. I know I sure have. It's tiring and physically and emotionally draining.

 

It seems like things have gotten too much, i'm getting to that stage now i think

 

I can relate to this. I lived as female for 24 years and presented very feminine with minimal dysphoria but once I realized that I didn't feel female, I felt fake to the core. The hair, the make up, the clothes, even my personality was all just a facade that I had been hiding behind and once the cat was out the bag so to speak, I just couldn't keep up the pretense any longer. Going to work and having to put on the make up, the false smile and the female clothes and literally pretend to be someone I wasn't anymore left me suicidal. I would come home and end up in a heap on the floor and was constantly breaking down. I didn't really have any social dysphoria before realizing I was trans and my body dysphoria was very slight but the minute I made that realization, it just hit me like a truck and soon escalated to an unbearable level.

Like JustJJx said, I think it's just gotten too much for you. Are you able to start transitioning?

 

I have asked myself this a lot too and have come to the conclusion that for me, it was probably due to a whole load of reasons which when put together meant it has taken me a long time to figure myself out. I won't list them all but things like not having a 'normal' adolescence because of school bullying, struggling with eating disorders, having a dysfunctional family etc. I can put myself in the shoes of my 14 year old self and know that there wasn't any thoughts or feelings there about being the wrong gender. But I know who I am now and I know that I see my future as a man, not a woman. I know that there are all of these nagging questions but I have given up trying to provide myself (and others) with answers to and instead, focus on accepting who I am, not how or why I got here, if that makes sense.

Is there a reason you have to try being more female? It's obviously not doing you any good :icon_sad: Transitioning is scary but not impossible

 

I can relate, I'm moving out to spare them and myself a few headaches.

We're all Christian, and while I personally believe transgenderism is compatable with Christianity; my view seems to be a rarer one.

I would say your feelings are pretty normal, which is /scary/ but reassuring. Once I finally stopped being in denial, everything just snowballed for me.
I can barely stand being called son or he/him, it feels like it's just /wrong/.

I mean 10 years ago I might have shrugged it off, and today I HAVE to; but I don't like it.

My transition brought a lot of personal discovery maturity and humility, I personally believe Jesus made me this way to teach me.

I'm starting to see myself as a struggling human rather than a human with particular struggles, you know?

I mean so many others suffer on a daily basis, mines just more physical, and we're only on this earth for a sliver of a shadow of time; so why not rock it while we can?

I'm at the point where I'm pretty much quoting Flea from Chrono Trigger: "Male, Female...what does it matter? Power is beautiful, and I've got the power!"

I'm ME. Gender is the outside, it's easy to say but it's true. Guys can look girly and girls can look like guys, at the end of it it's how we feel about ourselves and how we want to be perceived.

I want to be perceived female, but past that it's whatever. For all intents and purposes see me as female, and I'll see myself as a living being.


Anyways, sorry if I couldn't help, transitioning and trans feelings are not easy.


I mean think about it, people go to rehab and physio to relearn how to walk; I've had to take and pay for pills daily, retrain my voice, refine my gait, enter taboo territory, risk persecution on the daily, cry my eyes out for what seems years, have fears about my future family, lose or have fears of losing my current family, lose friends, receive abuse for living, spend tons of money, and when it's all said and done I'm one of the LUCKY ones.

It's NOT meant to be easy, but we have to work with the blessings we receive and go from there.

Goodluck brother!

 

It seems it wasn't "going about quite fine". In my case I grew up in deep denial, thinking "naw, this won't happen to me, I won't end up being a girl". The enviroment I grew up was deeply religious and repressing, so it wasn't an option to express how I felt about gender. Still, it was tolerable to a certain degree, because besides the occasional girly dress on sunday or special occasions, you are not living like a female, you are just a child playing outside, getting dirty like your mates, fighting, throwing stones, yelling, the good stuff, you know? :icon_bigg...

But you must live as a female when you hit puberty. You can't just start to run anymore without feeling those two things jumping. And you get fat. And the boys start to look at you as if you were something yummy.
To me it felt like hell. I wasn't happy with the idea of having to wear a dress on sundays, but what came with the puberty was just too much for me to take.
What I felt back then about my own body wasn't dysphoria, it was Mother-Godess-Queen-Dysphoria. I had no idea back then that my feelings had a name, I just thought I was deranged and tried to repress it the best I could.

I never told anyone because I felt scared that I'd end up in a mental institution. And all the other girls seemed to feel also weird, but at least they were able to talk about underwear and they cried watching Titanic... I always felt out of place next to the girls, but couldn't join the boys. I felt very lonely back then.

Fortunately I didn't ended up in a mental institution, even if I had frequent suicidal thoughts, but the side effects were that I gave up on school too soon, literally destroying a very promising career, and ended up like an emotional wreck, unable to sustain a normal relationship with a man... Or woman... Or even myself. I lost all joy of life, I became very reclusive and secretive and hated myself, until one year I just found some cool people at my school, and my social life became way better... But I still had to keep the secret, you know.

Fast forward... (because I'm an old fart now) I always knew I wasn't happy being a woman. I always knew that if I had the chance, I'd be born as a boy again. At the same time I knew that this wasn't the way I was supposed to feel. I tried to adapt, to conform, I even got into long term relationships with men and tried to play the female role. This was a disaster. I forced myself to wear make up and girly clothes to "cheer me up" when feeling depressed. I made it even worse, because I triggered my dysphoria. I knew I liked girls (hell, I loved them!) but when I observed lesbians I wasn't quite sure that it was my place or the best word to define myself. And yeah, I also became (and still am) the most passionate feminist you can imagine. Didn't worked, of course, I also felt out of place when talking to the feminists, because I felt out of place when being with women and trying to be one of them, had nothing to do with feminism. How can a man identify with feminism as a male? It's not the same way you identify as a woman, that's for sure.

Ok, I'm mixing a lot of topics here, and this is too long already, but the message is that we keep repressing ourselves because we are afraid of the truth. Once you know who you are, there is no turning back : You feel finally happy, really happy. Who wants to go back to the depression and self denial? ... I don't. I know it is neverending, and nothing good will come out of it... But something very good could come of being brave enough to be who I am.
I'm going to need help to get where I want to go : Therapy, and most probably surgery. It is scary, yes, but on the other hand I feel butterflies on my stomach when I picture myself as being finally the man I want to find when I look at the mirror. I smile when I imagine the rest of the world seeing me as a man, calling me by a male name. And I feel like (!) just by the thought of finally being able to flirt with a woman as a man, even if I'm sure she wouldn't want me, but anyways...
I won't be a perfect man, I'm not tall and my bone structure won't change, but I'm going to make the best out of it, because this will be finally my life, and not my parent's, my friends', lovers' or someone else's. My life, you know. And for this, for my own happiness, I'd go through a million transitions, to hell and back. Hell yeah! Bring it on, baby! (!)

Ok, sorry, rant over... :lol:

 

<3

 

Vodkabaret, if you're an old fart, I'm ancient history!

Raatox, I know what you mean. I thought I was okay with being a woman, even proud of being a rare example in my profession, until I realised that I was genderqueer or even trans, and especially since I discovered that it's actually possible to transition. Now I wish the logistics weren't so difficult at my age, there's just so many factors involved and I can't just start fresh the way I could in my 20's. So, although I feel more freedom now that I've stopped trying to be someone I'm not, I've grown more intolerant of my female body, and people's perception of me as a woman. I actually get jealous when I see transmen who have made a good transition and can pass, because I doubt that could happen for me now. It's so weird, because I never even thought about doing anything like that before.

I'm not even sure why it took me so long to figure it out, I'm sure it's been obvious to everyone but me for a long time. I can't count the number of times my mother has had to give me "hints", even as an adult, because I'm so clueless about anything feminine.

Better late than never, I suppose!

 

I can relate to all this a lot. Even though I've had dysphoria my whole life, my feelings were buried very deep, and no one ever explains dysphoria either, so I had no name for what I was feeling. I just felt very uncomfortable with and disconnected from my body. I still remember when I first learned what dysphoria actually, I was shocked. Even though I was struggling, I was still going through life as a girl. Now that I've realized what it really is I want, it's gotten so much worse.