It occurs to me that, after a lifetime of trying to fit in with everyone else, I'm now having a problem accepting that I am not and will not achieve this, and this is part of the reason I have gone from accepting my gender identity back into the bargaining stage. How long was it before you could comfortably accept that you weren't cis and how did you become comfortable in your identity?
Woof... big question. Short answer: roughly 40 years and lots of therapy. Everyone's journey is different though so I certainly hope yours is shorter than mine. What I can say is that once I accepted I was trans, I have been happier than ever. Still have shitty days with dysphoria, but on the whole, I'm in a much better place than I was. Sending big hugs your way... (*hug*)
I was ok being transgender years ago but I still tried to fit in (for family) and lived the wrong life. I'm finally transitioning and feeling great.
I've known I was trans for about 2 years and I've barely gotten much further from when I first started trying. I find it easier to accept myself though and be comftable being myself, but I still have a billion miles to go.
I'm still trying to accept myself, but knowing most of my doubt is from others telling me that ''non-binary genders don't exist'' - I look at that in the following way. When any time a new thing comes up, people perceive it as a threat. People don't understand it and think it affects them in a big way - or it invalidates them. Then there will be some sort of activist movement and people will realize it's not much of a threat to them. It might change their lives in some way [like having to accept they/them pronouns as singular], but it's little compared to the hate they were giving in the first place. So then it'll be accepted and they will move onto something else. [because nobody ever learns from the last time]. Do you have an old passport? Perhaps you could deface it so it shows the letter that is right for you (for the countries that already have NB on passport, it's marked as 'X').
I tried really hard to fit in for my whole life, and it was really hard for me to realize I wasn't straight, and that I would never be normal. I didn't have this problem with gender as much (although who knows? Maybe the feelings are still lurking under the surface somewhere), so I'm gonna talk a bit about how I handled it while coming to terms with my sexuality, since it's a very similar experience. I figured out that I wasn't straight in 8th grade, and wasn't 100% okay with it until basically the very end of high school. There was an overlap of internalized homophobia (I thought it was okay to be gay in general, but it wasn't okay for me to be gay) and mourning my chance of ever being "normal", and I think the combination made it take longer. I don't know how I got past my desire to be "normal". Over time, I just got used to it. The fact is, there are a lot of things that are stopping me from being "normal". Between being trans, bisexual, mentally ill, and having an eventful medical history, nothing about me is "normal". It was hard to get used to, but I've accepted that I don't have a choice. This is who I am, I can't force myself to be anyone else, and I can either let myself be sad about it or I can learn to be proud, so I learned to be proud.
