TIFU by becoming a woman.
You know, I did a decent job of it. However as I've grown older I realize that gender and sex are both skin deep and neither really defines who you are to yourself. Maybe to others, but not to onesself.
It really is the darndest thing, thinking I would die every day that I wasn't a woman. I spent my teenage years feeling sorry for myself and perpetually lost and alone. Looking for a specific flavor of validation, the kind that validated me as a woman. I kept it up, got on hormones, got my boobs, bottom surgery, a loving husband and lots of shoes.
It's been over 15 years now and I feel empty inside. I'm a woman. I've sacrificed and conformed, for what pay off? If I'm banging one dude the rest of my life, then why am I concerned with how everyone else sees me and treats me with regards to my gender and sexuality? I could have invested myself financially, intellectually, and emotionally in anything else with the same efforts and have more meaningful results.
I could have grown up to be an advanced professional. Instead I don't really have much going for my life besides the millennial basics, an hourly job and internet at home. All the things that bring happiness in life I've given up, like children, sports, or just being able to exist without being the target of discrimination.
It would have been so much simpler to have followed the beaten path and found what little happiness there is to find in life, because I honestly doubt it is that much less than the diminishing returns the happiness of womanhood has given me.
Gender is such a basic function of life. Yeah it's a big deal, but at the same time it really isn't. It doesn't define who you are, it doesn't inherently make life better, it doesn't do any of that.
TLDR: transitioning was like rerolling my character mid way through the game. I lost out on a ton of progress and XP because of how much time I wasted on my gender identity quest line.
EDIT:
I've read everything and promise to keep reading more as much as I can. No this wasn't a troll post, in fact it is difficult to post things like this because people just assume it is a troll. I'm not on a throw away, so I'm a very easy person to verify.
Thank god I posted. I've got so much internalized transphobic dissonance going around, reading a lot of these comments feels like seeing sunlight after being in the dark.
Transitioning is hard. It really is comparable, as others were saying, to a part time job, with the stresses of a full time job, in addition to everything else in life. Recognizing this relieves some of my stress.
It's always been told to me that anyone is ever doing the best they can at that moment. As I grow older I realize that isn't always true, and I think that is where some of this, "classical midlife crisis victim post," is coming from.
I'm nothing special. Being trans isn't special. It is challenging, but if it wasn't being trans, it'd be something else. People have dysphoria about everything. A larger waistline, bad teeth, receding hairline, too short, physically disabled, and more. And yet, for some reason, I feel that transsexual people such as myself feel that disappointment of not living up the external standards they set for themselves, much more than others do. And as I've aged, I've realized we're all the same really.
Maybe I didn't waste it. Who knows, maybe I'm better for it. I am better for it. I hope other trans people can try to see themselves more as people, than as transpeople, and I hope people see transpeople the same way. Cuz yeah, we're just people after all.
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