As a young trans person with an internet presence, I find most trans people here discovered themselves at older ages. They understandably denied or misunderstood their transness due to societal and cultural ignorance, which is terrible. It means they lived significant portions of their lives with unexplainable grief and/or distress before living as their true selves.
Yet I’m jealous.
I don’t wish I grew up in an even less understanding world, but I wish I had reached adulthood unaware of my identity.
For me, discovering myself early has been more torture than freedom. If I had known I would be denied medical transition, I would’ve never come out at school.
I’ve spent the past five years “looking like a girl" while using they/he pronouns. Well meaning teachers would ask when I would have access to hormones or hormone blockers, which only fueled my constant anxiety about that same subject.
I wish I had lived confused by my misery, able to push it down and label it something else (trauma induced, as my mother bbelieves it is). I would have much preferred ignorance, confusion; continued through middle and high school the way I got through fifth and sixth grade (desperately imitating femininity).
The trans people who discovered themselves after 18 had a different experience than me. They had the ability to transition as they needed, as soon as they realized they needed to (even though that realization took a while). That’s not me.
The thing is, once your “egg" has cracked (that is to say once you’ve realized you’re trans) there is no going back. I’ve tried forcing myself back to my birthname, stopping binding, wearing uncomfortable clothes, because it would be much easier to simply be closeted until I could transition the way I need. It just doesn’t work that way. I’ve read other peoples' descriptions of dysphoria, one of which described it as a moving a train. Trying to stop it with your bare hands just won’t work, since the distress and pain wasnt a choice in the first place. I can’t wish it away, and relief doesn’t come from trying to perform the gender most people associate with my birthsex.
It’s a blessing and a curse to learn your identity early. Too much of my experience has been a curse for me to really appreciate the blessings so far, though. I do look forward to the future, it’s just painful every second until that fateful 18th birthday. I’m being patient, but it’s very unfair. I know I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my identity and the hardships its brought, but sometimes I wish I could’ve been ignorant, unaware, detransitioned until I had control.
