A Thorn Among Roses

Not Being Trans Enough

I feel like this is seldom talked about in books or online regarding the feelings of trans people and not feeling like they are trans enough. (Did that even make sense?)

So, I myself go through small periods in time in which I don't believe myself trans enough or even at all because I do certain things. For instance when I look at myself in the mirror sometimes I see a girl that looks like a guy, and I don't really think anything of it until later when I kind of look back and question why I saw a girl instead of a boy.

In many cases I think the majority of trans people see the gender they identify as in the mirror and when I do things like see the other gender I tend to question if I really am trans just because of this. Even though I do experience quite a bit of dysphoria and have strong desires for hormone therapy and SRS. I don't know if I'm alone in that, but it happens every now and then.

If you ask a typical person on the street what transgender is and how you know if you are transgender, you'll hear something along the lines of being born into the wrong body and knowing your whole life. In many cases I have seen online (stories told by trans people themselves explaining their self-discovery), I have found that the majority of trans people did not always know (maybe because kids aren't really upset by their gender or even aware of it at young ages?), and found out later in their lives. In maybe 2-3 of these stories the people found themselves in late middle school to early high school.

But another common theme I see is that the people didn't know what transgender was. I have known what it was since I was five years old, but I thought of it in different terms. I always saw it as "Am I a boy? I can't be because this." And I thought it literally meant that a boy had been put inside of a girl or vise-versa. So I did not even think that me being trans was possible. As I grew older I found out more about it, especially when I joined an online community (it's on QuizUp if you want to find it. They're cool people.) and Avery came out to me. It was then that I truly understood what it meant.

Even after spending 10 months finding myself I still have to remind myself that I am a guy and many people go through this. But I still perceive myself as female when doing certain things or as doing feminine things a lot of the time. Even doing something as simple as putting on chapstick or sending a text in public makes me feel like I'm being seen as highly feminine, which does cause a lot of dysphoria. And by doing these things I feel less trans, and then I question everything again.

Personally, I just have to keep telling myself that some day I'll pass and that I will look how I want and be seen correctly, but still I do experience a lot of questioning myself. Am I alone in that?