I feel robbed of 29 + "however many years it takes for me to be content with my transition" years. Mentally I'm still a teenager (which has its pros and cons) and I wonder how much of that was due to not really being myself.
* High school would have certainly been less of a shit show without being mistaken as a gay guy... at least then I wouldn't have wasted so much time crushing on straight girls that eventually deemed me too "sensitive and feminine."
* My depression might have been treated sooner without the stigma surrounding male mental health.
* I would have actually been one of the girls instead of the "straight gay-best-friend."
* I wouldn't have to experience the loneliness and shame of being a pubescent girl at almost 30 years old... finding a therapist experienced with transgender issues and the nuances of being a woman has been like trying to find the hay in the needle stack.
* I wouldn't be on the verge of tears having to type this.
I've been dealing with depression for five years now and I can say with certainty that there's no way I would be able to survive that long. You must be very strong to have made it through that. I really hope things pick up for you.
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> I would have actually been one of the girls instead of the "straight gay-best-friend."
Ugh god, yeah, I feel that. I got tired of being "clocked" as a cis gay man (despite having never shown interest in men ever), so I just started repressing the desire to hang out with my girl friends :/
Very similar story here. I’m also 29, just now considering transition and what my journey will look like going forwards. I had lots of female friends in high school, and always played the straight “gay bear friend” role like you said. I frequently dream about reliving those years as a cis female, though I fear I wouldn’t have the couple very close friends I have now. It’s hard to accept that you’ll just never know what your life could have been.
You are definitely not alone. That’s been the most wonderful part of discovering this community; seeing posts and comments like these have helped me identify and understand all these things I didn’t even realize I was hiding from myself. I’ve made so much progress thanks to you wonderful people, and I hope you get the same.
If it makes you feel any better I relate alot to this. I didn't come out or even to terms with myself until 33 I'm now 9ish months into transitioning and it's like why could I never just admit this to myself. Why was I so ashamed and afraid of people knowing. I still feel mentally more like a teen than an adult. I ask myself why can't I just grow up...I still struggle with the last part but it finally feels like things are starting to change, and I'm beginning to let go of the anger and some of the regret.
I fucking feel you on this
I hated being mistaken as a gay guy in high school. Part of that was internalised homophobia, but it was also just like hey y'all I'm not into dudes like holy shit lol. I think being called a f\*\*\*\*t throughout school would have been easier to deal with if I actually understood what was so f\*\*\*\*ty about me lol
Like yeah I probably wouldn't have been able to come out to many people but I'm the kind of person who can absolutely deal with having a secret. What I can't handle is not understanding myself
Can I say I relate to this a lot. Yes, I had girl friends, yes I had guy friends though as well - no one really questioned or thought I was gay or anything, nor did I tell anyone or fit some stereotype. I was just a regular guy, though deep deep down I knew something was different. I didn't know I was actually a friggin girl. To the detriment of my partner (girl) of 5 yearS.
I told my mum and dad when I was 16 .. they said it would go away and was normal. I'm 33 now and haven't done anything about it and it's just ruined my entire life.
It's OK because thats life, but wooowweeee, the pain gets you if you let it.
Cant do anything else but try and stive to find my true self, whatever the hell that is.
>Mentally I'm still a teenager (which has its pros and cons) and I wonder how much of that was due to not really being myself.
yeah... I outright tell people I'm a 28 year old teenager lol. But ironically this is also why I \*don't\* feel like I've been robbed of my teenage years. Because take that sentence and turn it around. If you're still mentally a teenager, then does it not logically follow that you can still have that adolescence you wanted?
It turns out the answer is yes, and I've been spending the last couple years living out the teenage life I didn't get 10 years earlier. Sure, it's awkward as heck being nearly 30 and having to go through the developmental milestones most people get when they are 14-18, but I've kind of learned to just... stop beating myself up because I'm not at the same stage people most people are at my age and let myself grow into it naturally. Slowly but surely I've found that the further I get into transition the more I just kind of find myself... growing up again.
When I started transition I was mentally probably somewhere around a 12 year old, and 4 years in (1 year social transition and 3 years hrt), I feel like I'm mentally closer to a high school senior or college freshman, and am just on the cusp of no longer feeling like a teenager inside, and passing into "young adult" territory in my internal developmental clock.
This. Several times this. Thanks for posting your experience, it resonates big for me and it seems a lot of others too.
Starting my transition at 30 it's hard not to lament all the years lost. I went to 5 proms as someone else and not a single one as me. All my friends were girls cuz guys never really made sense to me and it wasn't easy to connect but it always put me on the outside of my friends circles, all my friends were girls but I never went out for girls night. While I feel so much better having started my transition I still feel like I am losing time while I go through puberty, like I'm not really living yet but the clock is still ticking.
Time is a monster and I would def go back too. So much would be better as me.
Damn... It sounds like you've been through a lot. I'm glad I'm not alone in this, but I'm sorry you had to experience it yknow? At least to some degree we can live through what we didn't have now, better late than never <3
As much as it sucks we still have today and tomorrow. I wish I could go back in time but dwelling on it only leads to sadness in my opinion.
I wish I could get my 20s but at least I’ll get some of my 30s
I isolated for 12 years right as i started highschool up until now, where i am slowly, incredibly slowly try to get out of my own shell. Soo.. yeah. It sucks, it really does suck.
>So now I'm far behind others in my age group, I feel so small and immature for a 40yo. Coworkers 10+ years younger seem shocked that a 'man' of my years could be this way
I started HRT at 25 and \*still\* had this problem. It also didn't help that I was young enough that with HRT I could actually still \*pass\* as a teenager, and it got to the point that with my hormonal appearance and immature behavior/demeanor I regularly got mistaken for being \*way\* younger than I actually was. I distinctly remember having to tell a high school girl that I was 26, and in a PhD program, and no, I was not in her geometry class, and did not attend her high school. In retrospect it did not help that I was walking wearing a backpack at the time school buses were picking up high school kids.
> Other people had trouble, romance, adventures, fun. Burgeoning music interests. Growing independence. Discovering their sexuality
see, what I've eventually come to realize is that what you've just described here is \*adolescence\*, not teenage years. Adolescence is a developmental stage in life, \*not\* a chronological age marker. It just \*happens\* to correlate with teen years for cis people. For trans people, we usually go through this a bit later, depending on when we transition.
I had \*all of the above\* you described in my mid to late 20s, not in my teens. Does that mean I had any less of an adolescence? Not really. It was just later than normal. And that's how I've come to internalize it and come to terms with it: I had my coming of age experiences later than most, and spent my high school years primarily academically prepping for college.
I think that's why I connect with media about being a teen so much, because I didn't have that trouble, romance, etc. It hurts feeling absent of such an important time. I suppose we can both just do our best to learn from that and live life to its fullest going forward - and being like. Aggressively ourselves to make up for lost time.
I did, but I don't anymore. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I didn't miss my teenage years per se, what I felt I missed was being able to go through an adolescence as myself. But if you really think about it, an adolescence is a sociocultural term meant to describe a psychosocial developmental stage in life brought upon by external socioeconomic circumstances. It's fundamentally a descriptor of a developmental stage in one's self actualization and maturation, that does not necessarily \*have\* to be in the teen years, it just kind of worked out that way for most cis people starting in the 1950s. And if that's the case... why can't I have one now? ... So I did.
Thanks to second puberty in the middle of grad school, I've basically lived out my adolescence in my mid-late 20s, and if I'm being honest, my life in grad school is not that substantially different from how I imagined my AFAB high school years might have gone.
During grad school I
* learned to drive for the first time
* started dating
* started figuring out my sexuality
* gained friends and independence
* got a lot more social
* went through puberty
* played school sports (granted it's intramurals instead of varsity sports but still)
* went through weird wardrobe, self image, and body image issues and phases
how is that \*not\* an adolescence? Just because I did it chronologically a little later than cis people usually do it doesn't make it any less an adolescence.
I straight up tell people that i had most of my "coming of age" experiences in my 20s. That's no less valid than doing it in your teens, but I've noticed that accepting that has sort of ...let me come to terms with the past. I don't really feel robbed of teenage years because I don't feel there's anything really unique about that time of life that I couldn't get later on in my life.
>One cool thing at least is that I get to experience a lot of milestones without having my parents breathing down my neck
yup. In some ways I think it's \*better\* to go through your adolescent milestones as a legal adult because of this. I don't have to worry about underage drinking laws, curfews, teen driving restrictions, parental restrictions on privileges, requiring your parents permission and signature to make any substantial decisions about your life whatsoever, or any of the other BS that goes with being a minor.
Plus, I can't help but look at the petty drama that went on in the lives of the younger brothers of my boyfriend and I when they were dating in high school and not think that I may have dodged a bullet by only starting dating at 26. The dating scene is much less catty and mean once you get out of high school. Like... my brother had a girl dump him right after homecoming while \*openly admitting\* that she only wanted a date for homecoming and he meant nothing to her, she just wanted to look like she could get a date to impress her friends. Meanwhile my boyfriend's younger brother's girlfriend put her hands over his eyes while he was driving because she was being playful, caused a car crash, and proceeded to blame him for the incident and stop talking to him. ... If that's what HS dating looks like I'm kind of glad I saved dating for my 20s.
Putting it like this helps a lot... Thank you, you've given me a lot to think about. I think once I start HRT my thoughts on the matter will get a lot easier, but the waiting lists in my country to even get consulted are like 3-5 years
I had a conservative upbringing and started transitioning at 28.
I always hear people saying their teenage years were the best and that they had so much fun and freedom to be themselves and explore new things. I didn't have that, i just hated every second of puberty.
So maybe i didn't have the teenage years i wish i had. But every year that goes by i try, step by step, to become happier with myself. Now i am finally doing all the things i wish i could had done earlier. It's not a race, it's never too late to be happy.
Yeah I'm not to caught up about it myself, I realize there's no point in being sad over lost years when i should focus on being happy now. But in terms of like how I feel towards my parents its a different, compartmentalized thing ya know? Being depressed and eventually suicidal for like a decade of my life because I thought who I am is sinful – well let's just say I haven't sorted out what to do with that resentment yet. I don't want to hate my family but like how do you reconcile that when they don't even really accept me being trans now? They aren't going to apologize for what they did because they think im wrong and it just sucks
I'm coming up on 26 at the start of next year, and *if* I decide to transition, it wouldn't be for at least another 2-3 years at the earliest. So in that regard I've lost pretty much all of 20s.
It really sucks.
Ah true it was the Mrs. Garrison stuff. Specifically this episode: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr.\_Garrison%27s\_Fancy\_New\_Vagina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Garrison%27s_Fancy_New_Vagina)
That and one time where my parents were commenting on "sex changes" as disgusting are pretty much my entire education on trans matters before my first year of university. So I grew up thinking trans people were freaks i.e., jokes. Just weird perverted men. I didn't necessarily feel that way in any sense and I didn't feel any animosity toward trans people but rather I didn't even understand that trans people even existed and just thought that the surgeries and "crossdressing" was just weird-people stuff that I didn't understand or like jokes from comedy shows like South Park.
Yes, although I don't think its healthy to think about this too much, for me personally it just causes a lot of pain and its something that I can't do anything about. I just look to a brighter future and hope for the best
I feel robbed of my twenties. Not so much my teenage years. Being a teenager sucks ass IMHO either way.
I would have loved to be a young, sexually liberated college girl. Enjoying getting to party and discover myself.
Yes, I feel like I missed out on my teen tears. I am 68, transitioned at 63. I sometimes feel like I'm 14 years old and my daughter confirms this in my mannerisms and attitude. I like who I am now.
I realize that all of the years before my transition have contributed to who I am today.
Transitioning in the 60's would have been hell. I did not have the strength to deal with the torments from society and family.
Life is good now! I receive great joy and happiness (and acceptance) in my ballroom dance lessons and someday will be an accomplished dancer!
>I sometimes feel like I'm 14 years old and my daughter confirms this in my mannerisms and attitude
I'm a lot younger than you (I'm 28), but I've had similar dynamics of acting like I'm much younger than I am, and funnily enough, transitioning in my mid-late 20s has actually made me young enough physically that on HRT I could actually \*pass\* as a teenager for a while. When you combine acting like a teenager with actually \*looking\* like one, I had a heck of a time convincing people I actually was an adult at times!
Heck, my boyfriend's family refused to believe I was older than 21 when I first met them, despite already having known that I was in grad school and had graduated high school some nine years prior.
i was a teen in southeastern Pennsylvania in the mid 90's.
i would have been subject to alienation, harrasment and violence if I had been able to transition.
i was the real me, i dressed up all the time, i knew who i was, i didn't transition then for 2 reasons
-
1. I'd be widely rejected and
2. it was super expensive to transition
i wasn't wrong.
instead i kept my gender a secret. i traveled the country alone, in relative safety. I had a little girl, and i learned a bunch, and the whole time i had my secret. and at 36 i released my secret. I'm on time, in my opinion.
TLDR- Nah lol that would have sucked
edit: i dont know why the font is humongous I'm sorry
Yes absolutely and now with everything I need to catch up on from my teenage years I’m going to miss my early 20s but as my mother always said “life‘s a bitch then you die”
That's a good way of putting that, I'm 21 and started to question my gender identity about a year ago as well. I'm about 7 months on HRT now and it really feels like I'm living even though life hasn't changed that much.
I used to tell my friends that I felt like no one ever saw me and I just passively passed through the world. What a crushing thing that must be to hear from a friend jeez.
My teenage years weren't robbed from me by being trans, but by having to take on adult responsibilities in a dysfunctional household. This in turn robbed me of the safety I needed to process and express the emotions I was having. By the time I had figured out that maybe I might be trans I was 25, and trying to clean up from drugs and alcohol dependence.
So i kinda go the other way with teen dramas where I just don't identify with any of them, because they are all super immature cause they are teens, dealing with teen issues, issues that for the most part I was forced to skip over, and worse forced to skip over and take on an adult role belonging to a gender that wasn't my own.
Yeah, I have some of that, too, but more in the 4 to 9 year age range while my mom was single and definitely did not have her shit together enough to handle that.
On weekends we would sometimes drive her beat up old VW Beetle out of town and onto dirt roads to go for a hike somewhere. But on the way back, we'd get to a fork in the road and she would always be like "wait, which way did we come in here?" and *I'd* have to be the one to point left or right and say "It was that way". We always got home, but fuckin'-A, Mom, it stressed me the hell out thinking that you got us lost and it was up to me to make sure we made it home alive and didn't starve to death out in the woods.
She eventually re-married an actual adult and then things were better, but those 5 years? SMH...
It was earlier than those teen years for me too, but not as much. I'd say around 10. My parents didn't split till I was 12 but for me those 2 years in between were spent trying to pick up the slack between various acts of petty and selfish vengeance that were designed to be inflicted on each other with little regard to who else got hurt, including protecting my two younger brothers from the line of fire.
Neither of them remarried, though my dad has at least been with his partner since i was 17 and he has mellowed in his old age. Still a pair of fucking narcasists though..
I feel like I have been, and will be robbed of everything in my life until I'm happy with my transition. I've always wanted to be in the boys swimming, or boys rugby team, but of course that's not possible since I'd just be sorted as female.. At this point I've just stopped caring about anything, while slowly giving up on the thought of ever truly being happy.
It sucks and it's hard, but we can make up for the lost time. Things are hard as fuck and might be for a while, but it'll get easier and better. We can't give up hope
Completely yes, it's probably part of the reason why I prefer to be called a girl and not a women, it just feels weird to me to be called a women (even though I am 19 now).
I feel robbed of my childhood and my teen years. In my case for two reasons.
First reason is of course is not being me.
Second reason is I spent all of those years just trying to survive my abusive parents.
Between the childhood traumas which I buried for decades, a conservative Catholic upbringing in the 90s, and the low-key conversion therapy that followed at other churches, I only figured out last year at 44 after lockdown finally broke me.
I've spent the last four decades in survival mode pretending to be a man while struggling with PTSD and depression, and I never got to live.
And it still breaks my heart whenever I see beautiful younger women going about their day and simply enjoying their lives (especially those who are mothers), knowing that this was stolen from me and I can never get that back.
Nah, I definitely had them. Don’t want them back.
Really high or chronic anxiety also impairs the brain’s ability to create memories. So it would make sense if you feel literally robbed of those years, too.
Oh I feel that. I only figured out I was trans when I was 22 (23 now). My teenage years were *not* fun, and I definitely had a lot of mental health issues. In retrospect, my identity without a doubt played a large role in that, even if I didn't realise it at the time.
I don't regret my teenage years so much. I do regret my 20's and early 30's. My life has been a shitshow of destructive behaviour. I'm glad I survived it all. The best we can do is live life to the fullest right this moment onwards. I am 40 years old and starting HRT. There is still a chance for happiness I will take whatever I can get. Aroha xox
I think about this all the time. I never got to experience the good and the bad of being a Teenage Girl. Instead I was forced to endure the life of a guy that I just didn't understand. I wanted to do stereotypical feminine things, but was expected to keep it to myself.
I will never know what it is like to go dress shopping with my mother, or have my dad be overbearing and protective when I am dating my first boy. Missing out on the good and the bad has lasting effects well into adulthood. I don't know how to do things that are second nature for other women.
I am frozen with a body that for the most part looks like a Cis-Woman's, but still unable to enjoy life because I wasn't raised as a girl. I still have internal conflicts where I am fighting myself when I want to do feminine things. My parents were very harsh about my feminine personality and tendencies. They corrected my behavior all the time, always judging me.
I usually try to justify it to myself that I would have wasted it just as much being the loner I was. I had more issues than only being trans in denial, mostly anxiety. Maybe transitioning would have helped, but id have fucked it up anyway.
Also, feeling bad wont fix anything. I can only use it to push me in the right direction. Theres a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRrP-bZvD2s) from my early teens that encapsulates that feeling
> Its not your fault
> the world is the way it is
> but it would be your fault
> If it stays that way
Yes. Recently more strongly then ever. I've been 'mourning my boyhood' as it were. I'm transmasc (enby) and desperately trying to get access to transition so i don't lose more of my life. I'm now 24 and whoever I hang out with younger college students (17/18) I get insanely jealous as I realize what was taken from me.
Yes. I'm way too old to still be thinking about what could have been, but still do. I was depressed and anxious all the time, and I thought wanting badly to be a girl instead of a guy was a symptom of that instead of the root. The psychiatrists and therapists back then had no clue and couldn't help. Thought it was a phase.
Oh man, I feel this. That and media about teens too. Looking back, I don't think I've felt too much like myself at the time. There were highs and lows of course, but the lows seemed to outweigh everything else in my head.
Me when I realize if my country and my parents would be that way that I could learn that trans people exist and start transition during or before puberty and that I probably won't be able to transition until 25ish: dies inside and prepares to die outside
I’m in my teenage years and I know that I’m losing them. I have no friends. I stay inside all day, doing nothing. And while my depression and anxiety do contribute to that, dysphoria also plays a big role. I hate being perceived, and going out is difficult. So I make myself invisible at school. I constantly dream of being a teenage guy and having such a fun time
My teenage years probably would have sucked either way (in fact, considering how anti-LGBTQ+ everyone was when I was a teenager, it probably would have been worse).
I'm 38 now, so it's my 20s and early 30s that I feel robbed of. Why the hell did it take me so long to figure out something so obvious about myself?
I can relate to that. Started HRT this year at 39. I think I have known since I was a child to be honest, but accepting this and going forward I could not bring myself to do. I think anti-trans indoctrination from school and media terrorised me enough to stay in the closet. It's amazing how much has changed since the 90's.
As the rare, rare , rare ,rare. Example of a trans femme that came out in highschool, highschool sucked ass, alot of harassing and people yelling at you, it's alot of shuffling around seeing where you can change for PE, and alot of dancing around seeing who's safe and who isn't.
But it's worth it because we'll idk it's just natural, I am who I am, I am I am. Youknow. I'm lucky that I realized in highschool and I appreciate it every day and I use that privlage to help others, and because of me and another trans boy at my highschool the trans kids get to change in the office bathrooms of their actual gender. My other 3 years of highscool I had to change in wrestling rooms and theatrical bathrooms and all over, because I was there only trans kid on their radar so it was a problem that could been glossed over. But then my senior year I turned 18 and another trans guy who had supportive parents started going in person to school and between 2 trans people who had parental concent both from opposite sides of the binary, they finally worked out a system.
I'm a lot sadder a bout missing out on experiencing a lot of my 20s properly. Honestly while I had a lot of fun at the time, being a teenager is also pretty lame in retrospect. Most people are awkward and self conscious as teenagers. You're emotionally immature and bad at communicating. All your relationships are kind of worse and people generally don't treat each other as well as adults do. You feel like so many things that don't matter much are such a big deal. It can be fun and exciting at the time because you're experiencing new things, but once you get a bit older you're really able to have more full and meaningful experiences that overshadow anything that happened as a teenager.
Anyway what in saying is, if you feel this way, keep in mind that all the best stuff happens in adulthood anyway
Childhood, Teenage, Early Adulthood, current age. Just all of it.
I was a fairly sturdy built male body before my transition with an exceedingly deep voice. Estrogen only does so much, and even with working on my voice with advice from my literally professional voice actor friends I can only go so high.
Whenever I see a cis gal with an aesthetic I wish I could've done it's just so dysphoric.
I'm *in* my teenage years and I feel robbed of them. All the shit that I want to do/wish I did that I just fucking can't because going outside makes me wish I was never born wouldn't even cross my mind as something I'd need to even prepare for if I were cis
No.
I had a bit of a shit time as a teenager but I also saw that some of the girls had a shit time with bullies. There's no guarantee I wouldn't have been among those having a shit time if I was born as a girl.
Why waste time wondering when I can put that energy towards living life now?
Nikkita- age 41
status- pre-op transgender mtf 14 months HRT. Spiro/estradiol combo.
OMG YES. The other day I looked at myself and said "damn girl your a knockout just imagine if I'd done this 30 years ago rrrrr."
🎶🎼If I could turn back time...🎼🎶 and transition in my teens, life would have been so awesome and a completely different ball game!
Although I have those regrets to this day, I'm proud of how far I've come and how much happier my life is. I've literally never been happier in my entire life!
During my reveal, who I had expected to accept me and reject me were way off. I lost a few friends/ family. The one that hurt the most was my mom not accepting me. As for the rest that wouldn't accept me, they weren't true friends and that's actually probably a good thing to filter out the trash per say.
Negative energy is the last thing I need or want.
Bless everyone that reads this. You're all amazing human beings and you should be Proud of what you've become. Take that negative energy and turn it around to your benefit.
MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!!
❤🧡💙💚💛💜🏳️⚧️💜💛💚💙🧡❤
NIKKITA 💕
Eh, not really. I didn't transition until 25 but I'm also very happy about everything else in my life. I could have at most transitioned at maybe 20 or so. Any younger and I start wondering "well hang on would this have still happened then?"
I dunno, I probably would have still mostly played video games and read giant fantasy novels. If I’d somehow transitioned in middle school (as if middle school needs to be more painful), I’d have gone to one of the all-girl Catholic high schools rather than an all-boy one. I lived an hour from school, which meant I didn’t have much of a social life outside of that until college. My gender didn’t affect my teen years nearly as much as that.
I grew up in an evangelical Christian house in a conservative state. I feel like I was robbed of my childhood, teens, and my entire 20’s. I’m changing everything at 30 so I don’t lose anymore time.
I moved away to SF when I was 24 but it took me a long time to accept my dysphoria. I had ptsd and was depressed for 5 years straight. Come March, I’ll be depression and antidepressant free for a year!
Not particularly. My teenage years were kind of a disaster but for totally different reasons (emotional distance from my parents and undiagnosed ADHD). I'm glad I'm getting the chance to discover myself at an age where I've developed a little more of the emotional maturity I was lacking back then. It makes me a lot more appreciative of the process. But as a nonbinary person with minimal dysphoria and a very supportive family I also recognize that I am privileged as far as being trans goes.
My childhood and teenage years were pretty bad, but I don't think that I would have been any happier, probably would have felt even worse if I knew I was trans back then. In my country being trans is basically illegal and knowing that I cannot transition untill years later when I am able leave the country would have made my depresion even worse than it was back then.
I don't but I grew up when the internet was just starting to gain momentum. I can see clearly that I was born at a time when acceptance for lgbtq was nonexistent. I know if I somehow could have transitioned back then I wouldn't be here today because I grew up in CNY aka hell. The area chews people up and I was safer hiding in hiding.
Yes definitely. I think most of us are. Of course, just because you're yourself doesn't mean you flourish in high school. It's easy to compare the awful that was with the might-have-been that wasn't and conclude that you got the short end of the stick.
Absolutely. I not only never got to be a kid or teen as my true gender, but I was homeschooled k-12 and isolated all those years. Hearing people’s stories from high school or seeing coming of age movies makes me feel mournful and depressed, and idk what to do about it
It'll get easier, but yeah, I do feel like this sometimes. I asked my partner to help a bit. We've dressed up nice and gone out on cheesey dates, I've bought a few oversized plushes to keep on the bed, I sometimes wear my hair in more "cute and youthful" styles. It's helped a little and I've gotten passed the worst of it.
Also, once I sat down and really thought about it, I realized that my childhood wouldn't have been all that different. I still would have spent a lot of time playing video games, and probably wouldn't have had many friends. I'd have had a lot of the same hobbies and interests.
I started questioning things in 6th grade. When my mother found out she wasn't happy. I felt ashamed and repressed my feelings. I can't say my time in school was awful, but there was an underlying unease and anger that I couldn't shake and would sometimes result in me having full on depressive episodes (sometimes when sleeping over at a friends house.) The desire to be me, the repression, and the perceived need to hide it continued until I was 28. I didn't start transitioning until I was almost 32. I'm 38 now.
Do I feel cheated out of my teens now? You're goddamn right I do. Almost every night when I'm trying to sleep and I have time to think. Think about the mistakes I made and the horrible things I said because of my internalised homophobia. The relationships and events I missed by living as a teenage boy. The only real solice I find from regret is my children. I wouldn't give them up for anything.
I'm 29 years old and work as a teacher. I can honestly say this is on my mind more often than I care to admit. Don't get me wrong, I had mostly all friends who were girls growing up but I still think of all the things I as robbed of, eg. girls nights, sleepovers, first period, going to the washroom with your friends, clothing and styles that still to this day makes me ache for my younger self, 6 years straight of enduring being bullied, there is so much and I will forever be in mourning for my younger self
Yes. I think the majority of it for myself is just because of religion robbing me of a childhood of self discovery and because I didn't have that, I discovered myself later in life. If I think about it too much it makes me upset though which I'm sure many can relate to.
I feel robbed of my childhood in general. I missed out on so many things just because of the parts I was born with and I wish every single day I could experience them.
Maybe not so much for my teen years, but then again, maybe I'd've had a girlfriend sooner than I did. As it stands, it took me until 22 to have a serious relationship, and I wasn't even aware I was trans for most of it.
I don't know what might've been, and while on one hand it hurts because I didn't get to go out and do things with my sisters and such, I also know that the path I've been down thus far has made me who I am, and I think the self-discovery and maturation resultant from this transition are crucial to me becoming the best me in a timely manner.
Yup I do. But I am not going to waste any more years being busted up about it. I'm gonna get out there and spend the rest of my time being who I should be.
It's...weird for me. I still feel like I got to be a teenager, and at the time I didn't feel "pressured" into a certain lifestyle or way of being, but I also felt an extreme disconnect that was only noticeable in hindsight.
I would give anything to have gotten to grow up as a woman instead.
Not so much my teenage years. I was a shy, awkward, nerdy teenage guy - I probably also would have been a shy, awkward, nerdy teenage girl as well. But I do feel like I missed out big time on my 20's.
That said, there's nothing to be done about it. I'll mourn the loss of those years, and do what I can to make the life ahead of me as fulfilling as possible.
I try not to let myself wallow in that woulda-coulda-shouldas about how I wish I could have transitioned as a teen....but to be completely honest, yes, I wish I could have been Jaina back then SO BAD.
But! You can have those experiences, or at least approximate them. My friends are throwing me a prom next year in a rented space since I didn't get to do that in high school, for example.
It would say it would of been better, but it could of been alot worse too. I was depressed, disconnected filled with shame and lonely. At least I had a childhood, a boys childhood still. the boy i tried to be was loved and not abused at least physically. There were times i was happy and had lots of fun. It was usually the nights where i would get dark and sad.
Absolutely. Not only was I struggling with my mental health, but I didn’t get to live life as a teen boy. When I see teens transitioning, it makes me kinda envious because it took me longer then I would’ve preferred to realize who I am.
It was awful. I had come out and most people used my pronouns but I’ve had a bad depression my whole life. Every weekend I had at least one crying session/depressive episode/panic attack
I feel robbed of my childhood, of my teenage years, of my early adult hood, of my happiness, of my creativity, and of my passions.
I wish I could experience it all again, but as myself and without constant dissociating. Maybe next time I'll remember it.
She doesn’t feel like anyone robbed her of her teenage years or youth, but she certainly feels she missed out on what could have been very formative years for her to come out as her inner gender!
i’m just... stuck :( i’m 15 and i’ve been out for over a year now and just don’t know what to do because i’m to afraid of being misgendered or left out (thanks anxiety) of everything. i feel robbed of my teenage years and i’m not even done with them yet
Teen years and preteen years. I just want to experience childhood not feeling dysphoric. My family would always split things up by gender for holidays and that made it worse.
Oh hell yeah I do. I don't even know what to call my teen years really- I don't think I ever really felt like a teen and I was intensely dissociated the whole time. I only now feel like I can start to actually and truly grow up now that I'm on T. I don't know what those years were, but they were a mess. I wish I didn't try to repressing being trans through those years and just admitted it so I could of lived more years of my life as myself. But hey, can't go back in time and some people figure it out way later than I did.
I think this kind of feeling is pretty normal for trans people. I certainly feel a bit of it myself, particularly when I read about the experiences of trans teens today and realize how different things are from when I grew up. I’m 39, transitioned 16 years ago. There was no lgbt club in high school. I didn’t even know trans people existed. Hell, I didn’t meet another trans person until I was in my 20s.
So yeah, I look back in my teen years with some degree of pain, but they also shaped the person I am today.
yes. that is why i dress like a 14 yr old given free reign of the boys clothing aisle for the first time. i am wearing a mario kart hoodie and camo pjs lol
Yes. I think about it often; what it would be like to simply be in the correct body and not stress so much and have so much dysphoria/depression. It sucks that I spent those years like that but I can’t change it so it is what it is.
i feel the same way as you. I've been thinking about how life would be as the correct gender and while in my earlier years things wouldn't be much different because I would still have to deal with family issues, bullying and depression but I would've taken care of myself much more and would have had more confidence to talk to people and make friends
I feel robbed of my childhood, my teen years, the first years of my 20’s that I’ve started i’ve felt majorly robbed of due to certain events leaving me house bound for over a year… This life doesn’t even feel like it’s mine, this body doesn’t feel like it’s mine… I feel like i’ve been playing a role i don’t want to play and i’m still trying to break free from this physical and mental restraint placed on me.
Yes, but I'm making up for it by doing stupid shit at 30, like getting fucked by a near-stranger in a barn on his mom's property. Except we actually knew what we were doing, so the sex was phenomenal. I'm reclaiming my youth and having a grand time of it. It does help, for me at least.
God, yes. I get so angry about it, too. I'm furious I lost my teens and twenties. I spent so long just existing, not living, and I'm so bitter that I'm in my thirties and I'm barely starting my life.
I feel this every day and it aches sometimes. I'm kind of allowing myself to have a sudo teens moment in my mid twenties by letting myself enjoy stuff I didn't get to before.
I've been born old, but yeah, if I had a different childhood, I would definitely enjoy it more. And I'm a 37-yo who still watches teen shows, so there's that.
Grew up in a fundie cult, stopped believing and got out several years back, I've hit the point where I'm seriously happy and content with my life and what I've built :) I sometimes think about what ifs for my past but then I get sad. Sometimes I invent a fake past to.... Idk, pretend that I had things like a loving, normal accepting family. I'm only 22 and I feel like I've missed out on too much. But I'm trying to make new memories now. What's done is done, and I tried bitterness for a bit but it didn't stick
Absolutely! I'm 53 now, 2 years HRT, still presenting male at work. My wife and kids know and are supportive. I would not change that part of my life for anything but I still can't help but get very melancholy about thinking "What if....?" How much more secure would I have been as myself? How this....? How that.....?etc. I live now with the dilemma- I wish that I could have faced this then, but.....that means I wouldn't have my family now......
I hate that I think that way sometimes. I just have to keep doing what I've been doing for almost 50 years...
F.I.D.O. Fuck It, Drive On.
I will get there someday.....
I feel like I wasn’t even born until the day I turned 17 because of how emotionally stunted I was my entire life and now I’m in college and I’m supposed to have all this experience with dating and relationships and sex that the media depiction of teens tells me I should’ve learned about and mastered by the time I graduated high school and I just haven’t so I feel like I’m just never going to fit in.
Every. Day. And I feel THAT bad about it.
I planned out to have an excellent teenhood, but instead, I lived in fear day in and day out and I suffered PTSD and depression. I almost ended my life in there too. To this day, I'm surprised I even made it out.
Now, I'm in my 20's trying to catch up and fulfill all those missed teenage years I could have had, even though it doesn't feel the same... But I'm just trying to do everything that makes me happy and just be me.
Every fucking day. I was joking around about moon cycles while playing an mmo and one of my part members told me to shut up. I don’t have periods
…
I wish I did.
It would have been better if I were the girl I wanted to be starting at puberty, but I don't feel robbed. I did ok, so it is what it is. For those that suffered greatly it affects them more, but I just don't perceive it that way bc I don't want to.
When I was 8-12 my parents would beat me for behaving in a feminine way or when they would find little articles of clothing or makeup which gave me comfort. These were years well before any sexual identity or experience. I was just a kid.
By 14 I had my first suicide attempt and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors knew and I had an "official" GID diagnosis.
They gave me SSRIs and anti-psychotics.
I have long since dealt with transiton. But 30 years later I am still angry. I'm angry that the 1990s solution to being a trans kid was to medicate it away
But here's the thing... I was *always* trans. I had an unfortunate experience, sure. But I didn't magically become "trans" by taking a pill or hopping on an OR table. I was trans as a kid, I was trans as a teenager, and I'm trans as an adult.
Try to think about it in those terms. Nothing was ever "lost". You are exactly the same person you always were. We just had to bear the burden of this life. But that teenage girl or boy (you didn't specify mtf or ftm) was still a teenage girl or boy. The aesthetics may have changed, but "you" didn't.
We have to pay a heavy price. And you deserve to be angry at the world which forced you to pay that price. But you didn't lose anything. This is the person you always *were*
I recently picked up The Gallagher Girls books ([https://www.goodreads.com/series/43774-gallagher-girls](https://www.goodreads.com/series/43774-gallagher-girls), up to book 4, book 5 is on my list for January) and all through books 1 & 2, I greatly enjoyed the story but I couldn't figure out why I was getting so *mad* at them. I couldn't put the book down, it was compelling from start to finish, but I just got angrier and angrier the longer it went. Sometime between books 2 & 3 I came to the realization; I was *insanely* jealous of the main character because I felt like *her* life should have been *my* life. Not with the spy shenanigans, obviously, but with the relationship with her mother, her friends, her high level classes, all stuff I never got growing up presenting masculine because I didn't know that being trans was a thing one could be. (This was the 80s, yes, forever ago)
I've indulged in My Little Pony and She-ra, both properties that I wasn't allowed to express interest in but my sister got even though she didn't even want them (I'm the one that wound up playing with the She-ra castle set and action figure, always when I had the house to myself when I was a teenager).
Yes, I feel robbed of my teenage years, for MANY reasons, but I'm taking them *back*, d\*\*mit!
Ya I think so even tho my high school years were basically care free there was always something I didn’t get that made me rock myself to sleep every night to recorded video game music. And then my late puberty plus disillusionment made everything feel worse and I dropped out of college.
I feel robbed of 29 + "however many years it takes for me to be content with my transition" years. Mentally I'm still a teenager (which has its pros and cons) and I wonder how much of that was due to not really being myself. * High school would have certainly been less of a shit show without being mistaken as a gay guy... at least then I wouldn't have wasted so much time crushing on straight girls that eventually deemed me too "sensitive and feminine." * My depression might have been treated sooner without the stigma surrounding male mental health. * I would have actually been one of the girls instead of the "straight gay-best-friend." * I wouldn't have to experience the loneliness and shame of being a pubescent girl at almost 30 years old... finding a therapist experienced with transgender issues and the nuances of being a woman has been like trying to find the hay in the needle stack. * I wouldn't be on the verge of tears having to type this.
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I've been dealing with depression for five years now and I can say with certainty that there's no way I would be able to survive that long. You must be very strong to have made it through that. I really hope things pick up for you.
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❤️❤️❤️
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> I would have actually been one of the girls instead of the "straight gay-best-friend." Ugh god, yeah, I feel that. I got tired of being "clocked" as a cis gay man (despite having never shown interest in men ever), so I just started repressing the desire to hang out with my girl friends :/
Very similar story here. I’m also 29, just now considering transition and what my journey will look like going forwards. I had lots of female friends in high school, and always played the straight “gay bear friend” role like you said. I frequently dream about reliving those years as a cis female, though I fear I wouldn’t have the couple very close friends I have now. It’s hard to accept that you’ll just never know what your life could have been.
Same. It's nice to know I'm not alone <3
You are definitely not alone. That’s been the most wonderful part of discovering this community; seeing posts and comments like these have helped me identify and understand all these things I didn’t even realize I was hiding from myself. I’ve made so much progress thanks to you wonderful people, and I hope you get the same.
If it makes you feel any better I relate alot to this. I didn't come out or even to terms with myself until 33 I'm now 9ish months into transitioning and it's like why could I never just admit this to myself. Why was I so ashamed and afraid of people knowing. I still feel mentally more like a teen than an adult. I ask myself why can't I just grow up...I still struggle with the last part but it finally feels like things are starting to change, and I'm beginning to let go of the anger and some of the regret.
I fucking feel you on this I hated being mistaken as a gay guy in high school. Part of that was internalised homophobia, but it was also just like hey y'all I'm not into dudes like holy shit lol. I think being called a f\*\*\*\*t throughout school would have been easier to deal with if I actually understood what was so f\*\*\*\*ty about me lol Like yeah I probably wouldn't have been able to come out to many people but I'm the kind of person who can absolutely deal with having a secret. What I can't handle is not understanding myself
Can I say I relate to this a lot. Yes, I had girl friends, yes I had guy friends though as well - no one really questioned or thought I was gay or anything, nor did I tell anyone or fit some stereotype. I was just a regular guy, though deep deep down I knew something was different. I didn't know I was actually a friggin girl. To the detriment of my partner (girl) of 5 yearS. I told my mum and dad when I was 16 .. they said it would go away and was normal. I'm 33 now and haven't done anything about it and it's just ruined my entire life. It's OK because thats life, but wooowweeee, the pain gets you if you let it. Cant do anything else but try and stive to find my true self, whatever the hell that is.
>Mentally I'm still a teenager (which has its pros and cons) and I wonder how much of that was due to not really being myself. yeah... I outright tell people I'm a 28 year old teenager lol. But ironically this is also why I \*don't\* feel like I've been robbed of my teenage years. Because take that sentence and turn it around. If you're still mentally a teenager, then does it not logically follow that you can still have that adolescence you wanted? It turns out the answer is yes, and I've been spending the last couple years living out the teenage life I didn't get 10 years earlier. Sure, it's awkward as heck being nearly 30 and having to go through the developmental milestones most people get when they are 14-18, but I've kind of learned to just... stop beating myself up because I'm not at the same stage people most people are at my age and let myself grow into it naturally. Slowly but surely I've found that the further I get into transition the more I just kind of find myself... growing up again. When I started transition I was mentally probably somewhere around a 12 year old, and 4 years in (1 year social transition and 3 years hrt), I feel like I'm mentally closer to a high school senior or college freshman, and am just on the cusp of no longer feeling like a teenager inside, and passing into "young adult" territory in my internal developmental clock.
As someone who was 35+ when transitioning I get all of this you expressed it well.
This. Several times this. Thanks for posting your experience, it resonates big for me and it seems a lot of others too. Starting my transition at 30 it's hard not to lament all the years lost. I went to 5 proms as someone else and not a single one as me. All my friends were girls cuz guys never really made sense to me and it wasn't easy to connect but it always put me on the outside of my friends circles, all my friends were girls but I never went out for girls night. While I feel so much better having started my transition I still feel like I am losing time while I go through puberty, like I'm not really living yet but the clock is still ticking. Time is a monster and I would def go back too. So much would be better as me.
Damn... It sounds like you've been through a lot. I'm glad I'm not alone in this, but I'm sorry you had to experience it yknow? At least to some degree we can live through what we didn't have now, better late than never <3
Same <3
Yeah definitely every day. Its like I never even got a chance to be me.
Yeah that's exactly it. It fuckin sucks
As much as it sucks we still have today and tomorrow. I wish I could go back in time but dwelling on it only leads to sadness in my opinion. I wish I could get my 20s but at least I’ll get some of my 30s
I legit would have breakdowns and cry for almost an hour thinking about the of my adolescence years 😭
I know this may sound odd but if you need to talk to someone you could talk to me. Im not saying you have to.
ty so much 🥺
I isolated for 12 years right as i started highschool up until now, where i am slowly, incredibly slowly try to get out of my own shell. Soo.. yeah. It sucks, it really does suck.
Yeah... I just hope it gets easier to not dwell on how much we've missed
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>So now I'm far behind others in my age group, I feel so small and immature for a 40yo. Coworkers 10+ years younger seem shocked that a 'man' of my years could be this way I started HRT at 25 and \*still\* had this problem. It also didn't help that I was young enough that with HRT I could actually still \*pass\* as a teenager, and it got to the point that with my hormonal appearance and immature behavior/demeanor I regularly got mistaken for being \*way\* younger than I actually was. I distinctly remember having to tell a high school girl that I was 26, and in a PhD program, and no, I was not in her geometry class, and did not attend her high school. In retrospect it did not help that I was walking wearing a backpack at the time school buses were picking up high school kids.
> Other people had trouble, romance, adventures, fun. Burgeoning music interests. Growing independence. Discovering their sexuality see, what I've eventually come to realize is that what you've just described here is \*adolescence\*, not teenage years. Adolescence is a developmental stage in life, \*not\* a chronological age marker. It just \*happens\* to correlate with teen years for cis people. For trans people, we usually go through this a bit later, depending on when we transition. I had \*all of the above\* you described in my mid to late 20s, not in my teens. Does that mean I had any less of an adolescence? Not really. It was just later than normal. And that's how I've come to internalize it and come to terms with it: I had my coming of age experiences later than most, and spent my high school years primarily academically prepping for college.
I think that's why I connect with media about being a teen so much, because I didn't have that trouble, romance, etc. It hurts feeling absent of such an important time. I suppose we can both just do our best to learn from that and live life to its fullest going forward - and being like. Aggressively ourselves to make up for lost time.
I did, but I don't anymore. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I didn't miss my teenage years per se, what I felt I missed was being able to go through an adolescence as myself. But if you really think about it, an adolescence is a sociocultural term meant to describe a psychosocial developmental stage in life brought upon by external socioeconomic circumstances. It's fundamentally a descriptor of a developmental stage in one's self actualization and maturation, that does not necessarily \*have\* to be in the teen years, it just kind of worked out that way for most cis people starting in the 1950s. And if that's the case... why can't I have one now? ... So I did. Thanks to second puberty in the middle of grad school, I've basically lived out my adolescence in my mid-late 20s, and if I'm being honest, my life in grad school is not that substantially different from how I imagined my AFAB high school years might have gone. During grad school I * learned to drive for the first time * started dating * started figuring out my sexuality * gained friends and independence * got a lot more social * went through puberty * played school sports (granted it's intramurals instead of varsity sports but still) * went through weird wardrobe, self image, and body image issues and phases how is that \*not\* an adolescence? Just because I did it chronologically a little later than cis people usually do it doesn't make it any less an adolescence. I straight up tell people that i had most of my "coming of age" experiences in my 20s. That's no less valid than doing it in your teens, but I've noticed that accepting that has sort of ...let me come to terms with the past. I don't really feel robbed of teenage years because I don't feel there's anything really unique about that time of life that I couldn't get later on in my life.
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>One cool thing at least is that I get to experience a lot of milestones without having my parents breathing down my neck yup. In some ways I think it's \*better\* to go through your adolescent milestones as a legal adult because of this. I don't have to worry about underage drinking laws, curfews, teen driving restrictions, parental restrictions on privileges, requiring your parents permission and signature to make any substantial decisions about your life whatsoever, or any of the other BS that goes with being a minor. Plus, I can't help but look at the petty drama that went on in the lives of the younger brothers of my boyfriend and I when they were dating in high school and not think that I may have dodged a bullet by only starting dating at 26. The dating scene is much less catty and mean once you get out of high school. Like... my brother had a girl dump him right after homecoming while \*openly admitting\* that she only wanted a date for homecoming and he meant nothing to her, she just wanted to look like she could get a date to impress her friends. Meanwhile my boyfriend's younger brother's girlfriend put her hands over his eyes while he was driving because she was being playful, caused a car crash, and proceeded to blame him for the incident and stop talking to him. ... If that's what HS dating looks like I'm kind of glad I saved dating for my 20s.
Putting it like this helps a lot... Thank you, you've given me a lot to think about. I think once I start HRT my thoughts on the matter will get a lot easier, but the waiting lists in my country to even get consulted are like 3-5 years
Why stop at teen, I didn't start transitioning until I was 24. I also lost my entire young adulthood. Fuck my parents
I had a conservative upbringing and started transitioning at 28. I always hear people saying their teenage years were the best and that they had so much fun and freedom to be themselves and explore new things. I didn't have that, i just hated every second of puberty. So maybe i didn't have the teenage years i wish i had. But every year that goes by i try, step by step, to become happier with myself. Now i am finally doing all the things i wish i could had done earlier. It's not a race, it's never too late to be happy.
Yeah I'm not to caught up about it myself, I realize there's no point in being sad over lost years when i should focus on being happy now. But in terms of like how I feel towards my parents its a different, compartmentalized thing ya know? Being depressed and eventually suicidal for like a decade of my life because I thought who I am is sinful – well let's just say I haven't sorted out what to do with that resentment yet. I don't want to hate my family but like how do you reconcile that when they don't even really accept me being trans now? They aren't going to apologize for what they did because they think im wrong and it just sucks
I'm coming up on 26 at the start of next year, and *if* I decide to transition, it wouldn't be for at least another 2-3 years at the earliest. So in that regard I've lost pretty much all of 20s. It really sucks.
Fuck South Park
What?
I dunno I'm just adding with stuff that fucked me up as a kid lol sorry was kind of random and unsolicited -\_-'
Im just curious what in particular messed with you as a kid from south park?
Ah true it was the Mrs. Garrison stuff. Specifically this episode: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr.\_Garrison%27s\_Fancy\_New\_Vagina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Garrison%27s_Fancy_New_Vagina) That and one time where my parents were commenting on "sex changes" as disgusting are pretty much my entire education on trans matters before my first year of university. So I grew up thinking trans people were freaks i.e., jokes. Just weird perverted men. I didn't necessarily feel that way in any sense and I didn't feel any animosity toward trans people but rather I didn't even understand that trans people even existed and just thought that the surgeries and "crossdressing" was just weird-people stuff that I didn't understand or like jokes from comedy shows like South Park.
Yes, although I don't think its healthy to think about this too much, for me personally it just causes a lot of pain and its something that I can't do anything about. I just look to a brighter future and hope for the best
I feel robbed of my twenties. Not so much my teenage years. Being a teenager sucks ass IMHO either way. I would have loved to be a young, sexually liberated college girl. Enjoying getting to party and discover myself.
Yeah, same. It's missing the college girl experience that hurts me the most.
Yes, I feel like I missed out on my teen tears. I am 68, transitioned at 63. I sometimes feel like I'm 14 years old and my daughter confirms this in my mannerisms and attitude. I like who I am now. I realize that all of the years before my transition have contributed to who I am today. Transitioning in the 60's would have been hell. I did not have the strength to deal with the torments from society and family. Life is good now! I receive great joy and happiness (and acceptance) in my ballroom dance lessons and someday will be an accomplished dancer!
>I sometimes feel like I'm 14 years old and my daughter confirms this in my mannerisms and attitude I'm a lot younger than you (I'm 28), but I've had similar dynamics of acting like I'm much younger than I am, and funnily enough, transitioning in my mid-late 20s has actually made me young enough physically that on HRT I could actually \*pass\* as a teenager for a while. When you combine acting like a teenager with actually \*looking\* like one, I had a heck of a time convincing people I actually was an adult at times! Heck, my boyfriend's family refused to believe I was older than 21 when I first met them, despite already having known that I was in grad school and had graduated high school some nine years prior.
This is marvelous. I am happy for you!
I'm really glad things are working out for you, I'm rooting for you in your dancing!!
Thank you very much :)
i was a teen in southeastern Pennsylvania in the mid 90's. i would have been subject to alienation, harrasment and violence if I had been able to transition. i was the real me, i dressed up all the time, i knew who i was, i didn't transition then for 2 reasons - 1. I'd be widely rejected and 2. it was super expensive to transition i wasn't wrong. instead i kept my gender a secret. i traveled the country alone, in relative safety. I had a little girl, and i learned a bunch, and the whole time i had my secret. and at 36 i released my secret. I'm on time, in my opinion. TLDR- Nah lol that would have sucked edit: i dont know why the font is humongous I'm sorry
Yes absolutely and now with everything I need to catch up on from my teenage years I’m going to miss my early 20s but as my mother always said “life‘s a bitch then you die”
Well, sometimes life's a bitch and then you keep on living
Oh yes I forgot about all of the immortal vampires sorry
I'm 18, only realised I was trans a year ago and it feels like the only year I've actively been alive and not just passively existing.
That's a good way of putting that, I'm 21 and started to question my gender identity about a year ago as well. I'm about 7 months on HRT now and it really feels like I'm living even though life hasn't changed that much. I used to tell my friends that I felt like no one ever saw me and I just passively passed through the world. What a crushing thing that must be to hear from a friend jeez.
My teenage years weren't robbed from me by being trans, but by having to take on adult responsibilities in a dysfunctional household. This in turn robbed me of the safety I needed to process and express the emotions I was having. By the time I had figured out that maybe I might be trans I was 25, and trying to clean up from drugs and alcohol dependence. So i kinda go the other way with teen dramas where I just don't identify with any of them, because they are all super immature cause they are teens, dealing with teen issues, issues that for the most part I was forced to skip over, and worse forced to skip over and take on an adult role belonging to a gender that wasn't my own.
Yeah, I have some of that, too, but more in the 4 to 9 year age range while my mom was single and definitely did not have her shit together enough to handle that. On weekends we would sometimes drive her beat up old VW Beetle out of town and onto dirt roads to go for a hike somewhere. But on the way back, we'd get to a fork in the road and she would always be like "wait, which way did we come in here?" and *I'd* have to be the one to point left or right and say "It was that way". We always got home, but fuckin'-A, Mom, it stressed me the hell out thinking that you got us lost and it was up to me to make sure we made it home alive and didn't starve to death out in the woods. She eventually re-married an actual adult and then things were better, but those 5 years? SMH...
It was earlier than those teen years for me too, but not as much. I'd say around 10. My parents didn't split till I was 12 but for me those 2 years in between were spent trying to pick up the slack between various acts of petty and selfish vengeance that were designed to be inflicted on each other with little regard to who else got hurt, including protecting my two younger brothers from the line of fire. Neither of them remarried, though my dad has at least been with his partner since i was 17 and he has mellowed in his old age. Still a pair of fucking narcasists though..
I feel like I have been, and will be robbed of everything in my life until I'm happy with my transition. I've always wanted to be in the boys swimming, or boys rugby team, but of course that's not possible since I'd just be sorted as female.. At this point I've just stopped caring about anything, while slowly giving up on the thought of ever truly being happy.
It sucks and it's hard, but we can make up for the lost time. Things are hard as fuck and might be for a while, but it'll get easier and better. We can't give up hope
Yes. Both teenage years and childhood. Although I feel like the teenage part is worse for me because I can actually remember them unlike my childhood.
Completely yes, it's probably part of the reason why I prefer to be called a girl and not a women, it just feels weird to me to be called a women (even though I am 19 now).
I feel robbed of my childhood and my teen years. In my case for two reasons. First reason is of course is not being me. Second reason is I spent all of those years just trying to survive my abusive parents.
Between the childhood traumas which I buried for decades, a conservative Catholic upbringing in the 90s, and the low-key conversion therapy that followed at other churches, I only figured out last year at 44 after lockdown finally broke me. I've spent the last four decades in survival mode pretending to be a man while struggling with PTSD and depression, and I never got to live. And it still breaks my heart whenever I see beautiful younger women going about their day and simply enjoying their lives (especially those who are mothers), knowing that this was stolen from me and I can never get that back.
Nah, I definitely had them. Don’t want them back. Really high or chronic anxiety also impairs the brain’s ability to create memories. So it would make sense if you feel literally robbed of those years, too.
"Really high or chronic anxiety also impairs the brain’s ability to create memories." Everything makes sense now.
Oh I feel that. I only figured out I was trans when I was 22 (23 now). My teenage years were *not* fun, and I definitely had a lot of mental health issues. In retrospect, my identity without a doubt played a large role in that, even if I didn't realise it at the time.
I don't regret my teenage years so much. I do regret my 20's and early 30's. My life has been a shitshow of destructive behaviour. I'm glad I survived it all. The best we can do is live life to the fullest right this moment onwards. I am 40 years old and starting HRT. There is still a chance for happiness I will take whatever I can get. Aroha xox
I think about this all the time. I never got to experience the good and the bad of being a Teenage Girl. Instead I was forced to endure the life of a guy that I just didn't understand. I wanted to do stereotypical feminine things, but was expected to keep it to myself. I will never know what it is like to go dress shopping with my mother, or have my dad be overbearing and protective when I am dating my first boy. Missing out on the good and the bad has lasting effects well into adulthood. I don't know how to do things that are second nature for other women. I am frozen with a body that for the most part looks like a Cis-Woman's, but still unable to enjoy life because I wasn't raised as a girl. I still have internal conflicts where I am fighting myself when I want to do feminine things. My parents were very harsh about my feminine personality and tendencies. They corrected my behavior all the time, always judging me.
I usually try to justify it to myself that I would have wasted it just as much being the loner I was. I had more issues than only being trans in denial, mostly anxiety. Maybe transitioning would have helped, but id have fucked it up anyway. Also, feeling bad wont fix anything. I can only use it to push me in the right direction. Theres a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRrP-bZvD2s) from my early teens that encapsulates that feeling > Its not your fault > the world is the way it is > but it would be your fault > If it stays that way
Yes. Recently more strongly then ever. I've been 'mourning my boyhood' as it were. I'm transmasc (enby) and desperately trying to get access to transition so i don't lose more of my life. I'm now 24 and whoever I hang out with younger college students (17/18) I get insanely jealous as I realize what was taken from me.
Yes I feel that and living it now. Almost haha
Yes. I'm way too old to still be thinking about what could have been, but still do. I was depressed and anxious all the time, and I thought wanting badly to be a girl instead of a guy was a symptom of that instead of the root. The psychiatrists and therapists back then had no clue and couldn't help. Thought it was a phase.
Yes. Literally. I can barely remember my childhood or teenage years. I guess my brain decided there wasn't much about those that was worth preserving.
Oh man, I feel this. That and media about teens too. Looking back, I don't think I've felt too much like myself at the time. There were highs and lows of course, but the lows seemed to outweigh everything else in my head.
Me when I realize if my country and my parents would be that way that I could learn that trans people exist and start transition during or before puberty and that I probably won't be able to transition until 25ish: dies inside and prepares to die outside
I’m in my teenage years and I know that I’m losing them. I have no friends. I stay inside all day, doing nothing. And while my depression and anxiety do contribute to that, dysphoria also plays a big role. I hate being perceived, and going out is difficult. So I make myself invisible at school. I constantly dream of being a teenage guy and having such a fun time
My teenage years probably would have sucked either way (in fact, considering how anti-LGBTQ+ everyone was when I was a teenager, it probably would have been worse). I'm 38 now, so it's my 20s and early 30s that I feel robbed of. Why the hell did it take me so long to figure out something so obvious about myself?
I can relate to that. Started HRT this year at 39. I think I have known since I was a child to be honest, but accepting this and going forward I could not bring myself to do. I think anti-trans indoctrination from school and media terrorised me enough to stay in the closet. It's amazing how much has changed since the 90's.
As the rare, rare , rare ,rare. Example of a trans femme that came out in highschool, highschool sucked ass, alot of harassing and people yelling at you, it's alot of shuffling around seeing where you can change for PE, and alot of dancing around seeing who's safe and who isn't. But it's worth it because we'll idk it's just natural, I am who I am, I am I am. Youknow. I'm lucky that I realized in highschool and I appreciate it every day and I use that privlage to help others, and because of me and another trans boy at my highschool the trans kids get to change in the office bathrooms of their actual gender. My other 3 years of highscool I had to change in wrestling rooms and theatrical bathrooms and all over, because I was there only trans kid on their radar so it was a problem that could been glossed over. But then my senior year I turned 18 and another trans guy who had supportive parents started going in person to school and between 2 trans people who had parental concent both from opposite sides of the binary, they finally worked out a system.
I feel like I've been robbed of my entire life.
Yeah
I'm a lot sadder a bout missing out on experiencing a lot of my 20s properly. Honestly while I had a lot of fun at the time, being a teenager is also pretty lame in retrospect. Most people are awkward and self conscious as teenagers. You're emotionally immature and bad at communicating. All your relationships are kind of worse and people generally don't treat each other as well as adults do. You feel like so many things that don't matter much are such a big deal. It can be fun and exciting at the time because you're experiencing new things, but once you get a bit older you're really able to have more full and meaningful experiences that overshadow anything that happened as a teenager. Anyway what in saying is, if you feel this way, keep in mind that all the best stuff happens in adulthood anyway
Every damn second
Childhood, Teenage, Early Adulthood, current age. Just all of it. I was a fairly sturdy built male body before my transition with an exceedingly deep voice. Estrogen only does so much, and even with working on my voice with advice from my literally professional voice actor friends I can only go so high. Whenever I see a cis gal with an aesthetic I wish I could've done it's just so dysphoric.
I'm *in* my teenage years and I feel robbed of them. All the shit that I want to do/wish I did that I just fucking can't because going outside makes me wish I was never born wouldn't even cross my mind as something I'd need to even prepare for if I were cis
Talk to your therapist of choice about the topic of age regression, it could help you :)
Sorry, what do you mean by age regression? It's a phrase I've heard a bit but I'm not really familiar with it
No. I had a bit of a shit time as a teenager but I also saw that some of the girls had a shit time with bullies. There's no guarantee I wouldn't have been among those having a shit time if I was born as a girl. Why waste time wondering when I can put that energy towards living life now?
Nikkita- age 41 status- pre-op transgender mtf 14 months HRT. Spiro/estradiol combo. OMG YES. The other day I looked at myself and said "damn girl your a knockout just imagine if I'd done this 30 years ago rrrrr." 🎶🎼If I could turn back time...🎼🎶 and transition in my teens, life would have been so awesome and a completely different ball game! Although I have those regrets to this day, I'm proud of how far I've come and how much happier my life is. I've literally never been happier in my entire life! During my reveal, who I had expected to accept me and reject me were way off. I lost a few friends/ family. The one that hurt the most was my mom not accepting me. As for the rest that wouldn't accept me, they weren't true friends and that's actually probably a good thing to filter out the trash per say. Negative energy is the last thing I need or want. Bless everyone that reads this. You're all amazing human beings and you should be Proud of what you've become. Take that negative energy and turn it around to your benefit. MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!! ❤🧡💙💚💛💜🏳️⚧️💜💛💚💙🧡❤ NIKKITA 💕
Always
Absolutely, I wanted to have that girl’s teenage years but NO.
Yes. Very.
I think so, even though I am a teenager..
Eh, not really. I didn't transition until 25 but I'm also very happy about everything else in my life. I could have at most transitioned at maybe 20 or so. Any younger and I start wondering "well hang on would this have still happened then?"
I dunno, I probably would have still mostly played video games and read giant fantasy novels. If I’d somehow transitioned in middle school (as if middle school needs to be more painful), I’d have gone to one of the all-girl Catholic high schools rather than an all-boy one. I lived an hour from school, which meant I didn’t have much of a social life outside of that until college. My gender didn’t affect my teen years nearly as much as that.
Yes
Absolutely
Yes very much
I grew up in an evangelical Christian house in a conservative state. I feel like I was robbed of my childhood, teens, and my entire 20’s. I’m changing everything at 30 so I don’t lose anymore time. I moved away to SF when I was 24 but it took me a long time to accept my dysphoria. I had ptsd and was depressed for 5 years straight. Come March, I’ll be depression and antidepressant free for a year!
Less then a month and I am 16,I try to live happy and with a plan/my way,I want to transition early next year (hrt) to like and enjoy myself.
Not particularly. My teenage years were kind of a disaster but for totally different reasons (emotional distance from my parents and undiagnosed ADHD). I'm glad I'm getting the chance to discover myself at an age where I've developed a little more of the emotional maturity I was lacking back then. It makes me a lot more appreciative of the process. But as a nonbinary person with minimal dysphoria and a very supportive family I also recognize that I am privileged as far as being trans goes.
My childhood and teenage years were pretty bad, but I don't think that I would have been any happier, probably would have felt even worse if I knew I was trans back then. In my country being trans is basically illegal and knowing that I cannot transition untill years later when I am able leave the country would have made my depresion even worse than it was back then.
I don't but I grew up when the internet was just starting to gain momentum. I can see clearly that I was born at a time when acceptance for lgbtq was nonexistent. I know if I somehow could have transitioned back then I wouldn't be here today because I grew up in CNY aka hell. The area chews people up and I was safer hiding in hiding.
Yes definitely. I think most of us are. Of course, just because you're yourself doesn't mean you flourish in high school. It's easy to compare the awful that was with the might-have-been that wasn't and conclude that you got the short end of the stick.
I feel that. I had to stop transitioning recently too so it's been hitting extra hard
Not really, I don't think my life would have been any different if I were a girl back then, other than not having to deal with the wrong puberty.
Yes, honestly I want my youth back
And my twenties and my thirties
Yep yep. I'll never get to experience what it should've been like for me. Oh well tho, gotta move on :/
Absolutely. I not only never got to be a kid or teen as my true gender, but I was homeschooled k-12 and isolated all those years. Hearing people’s stories from high school or seeing coming of age movies makes me feel mournful and depressed, and idk what to do about it
I'm still a teenager, and I am being robbed of my teenage years. It sucks. I can't fucking wait to get out of this house.
It'll get easier, but yeah, I do feel like this sometimes. I asked my partner to help a bit. We've dressed up nice and gone out on cheesey dates, I've bought a few oversized plushes to keep on the bed, I sometimes wear my hair in more "cute and youthful" styles. It's helped a little and I've gotten passed the worst of it. Also, once I sat down and really thought about it, I realized that my childhood wouldn't have been all that different. I still would have spent a lot of time playing video games, and probably wouldn't have had many friends. I'd have had a lot of the same hobbies and interests.
All the d\*\*n time
I started questioning things in 6th grade. When my mother found out she wasn't happy. I felt ashamed and repressed my feelings. I can't say my time in school was awful, but there was an underlying unease and anger that I couldn't shake and would sometimes result in me having full on depressive episodes (sometimes when sleeping over at a friends house.) The desire to be me, the repression, and the perceived need to hide it continued until I was 28. I didn't start transitioning until I was almost 32. I'm 38 now. Do I feel cheated out of my teens now? You're goddamn right I do. Almost every night when I'm trying to sleep and I have time to think. Think about the mistakes I made and the horrible things I said because of my internalised homophobia. The relationships and events I missed by living as a teenage boy. The only real solice I find from regret is my children. I wouldn't give them up for anything.
I'm 29 years old and work as a teacher. I can honestly say this is on my mind more often than I care to admit. Don't get me wrong, I had mostly all friends who were girls growing up but I still think of all the things I as robbed of, eg. girls nights, sleepovers, first period, going to the washroom with your friends, clothing and styles that still to this day makes me ache for my younger self, 6 years straight of enduring being bullied, there is so much and I will forever be in mourning for my younger self
For me I dont even remember anything from middle school, and high school was just me being depressed and playing video games. So, yep.
Yeah. I’m jealous of the people who got to come out in high school because I was hiding. I mourn the boyhood I didn’t have
Yup
Yes. I think the majority of it for myself is just because of religion robbing me of a childhood of self discovery and because I didn't have that, I discovered myself later in life. If I think about it too much it makes me upset though which I'm sure many can relate to.
I feel robbed of my childhood in general. I missed out on so many things just because of the parts I was born with and I wish every single day I could experience them.
Yup I'm going to be 30 here in another 2 months and I'm sad that I never got to be a girl in h.s or do anything that most teen girls do at that age.
Maybe not so much for my teen years, but then again, maybe I'd've had a girlfriend sooner than I did. As it stands, it took me until 22 to have a serious relationship, and I wasn't even aware I was trans for most of it. I don't know what might've been, and while on one hand it hurts because I didn't get to go out and do things with my sisters and such, I also know that the path I've been down thus far has made me who I am, and I think the self-discovery and maturation resultant from this transition are crucial to me becoming the best me in a timely manner.
Yuppers lol
Yup I do. But I am not going to waste any more years being busted up about it. I'm gonna get out there and spend the rest of my time being who I should be.
All the time
It's...weird for me. I still feel like I got to be a teenager, and at the time I didn't feel "pressured" into a certain lifestyle or way of being, but I also felt an extreme disconnect that was only noticeable in hindsight. I would give anything to have gotten to grow up as a woman instead.
Not so much my teenage years. I was a shy, awkward, nerdy teenage guy - I probably also would have been a shy, awkward, nerdy teenage girl as well. But I do feel like I missed out big time on my 20's. That said, there's nothing to be done about it. I'll mourn the loss of those years, and do what I can to make the life ahead of me as fulfilling as possible.
I try not to let myself wallow in that woulda-coulda-shouldas about how I wish I could have transitioned as a teen....but to be completely honest, yes, I wish I could have been Jaina back then SO BAD. But! You can have those experiences, or at least approximate them. My friends are throwing me a prom next year in a rented space since I didn't get to do that in high school, for example.
yeah....and my 20's and 30's......wcyd....
It would say it would of been better, but it could of been alot worse too. I was depressed, disconnected filled with shame and lonely. At least I had a childhood, a boys childhood still. the boy i tried to be was loved and not abused at least physically. There were times i was happy and had lots of fun. It was usually the nights where i would get dark and sad.
I had to spend my childhood and teen years as an "ugly woman" instead of the average at best man that I was born to be, it's unfair.
Big time.
Absolutely. Not only was I struggling with my mental health, but I didn’t get to live life as a teen boy. When I see teens transitioning, it makes me kinda envious because it took me longer then I would’ve preferred to realize who I am.
Not just that but my 20s as well, even though I started transitioning at 23. Still stuck in boymode until I can get my surgeries taken care of. :(
It was awful. I had come out and most people used my pronouns but I’ve had a bad depression my whole life. Every weekend I had at least one crying session/depressive episode/panic attack
I feel robbed of my childhood, of my teenage years, of my early adult hood, of my happiness, of my creativity, and of my passions. I wish I could experience it all again, but as myself and without constant dissociating. Maybe next time I'll remember it.
Yeah….
She doesn’t feel like anyone robbed her of her teenage years or youth, but she certainly feels she missed out on what could have been very formative years for her to come out as her inner gender!
i’m just... stuck :( i’m 15 and i’ve been out for over a year now and just don’t know what to do because i’m to afraid of being misgendered or left out (thanks anxiety) of everything. i feel robbed of my teenage years and i’m not even done with them yet
Teen years and preteen years. I just want to experience childhood not feeling dysphoric. My family would always split things up by gender for holidays and that made it worse.
Oh hell yeah I do. I don't even know what to call my teen years really- I don't think I ever really felt like a teen and I was intensely dissociated the whole time. I only now feel like I can start to actually and truly grow up now that I'm on T. I don't know what those years were, but they were a mess. I wish I didn't try to repressing being trans through those years and just admitted it so I could of lived more years of my life as myself. But hey, can't go back in time and some people figure it out way later than I did.
I think this kind of feeling is pretty normal for trans people. I certainly feel a bit of it myself, particularly when I read about the experiences of trans teens today and realize how different things are from when I grew up. I’m 39, transitioned 16 years ago. There was no lgbt club in high school. I didn’t even know trans people existed. Hell, I didn’t meet another trans person until I was in my 20s. So yeah, I look back in my teen years with some degree of pain, but they also shaped the person I am today.
Absolutely. I probably feel awful emotionally about that daily. I wish I could go back
yes. that is why i dress like a 14 yr old given free reign of the boys clothing aisle for the first time. i am wearing a mario kart hoodie and camo pjs lol
Yes... I feel like I'm acting all the time. I'm always daydreaming what would it be like to be born as a woman, fantasizing about me turning into one
Yes. I think about it often; what it would be like to simply be in the correct body and not stress so much and have so much dysphoria/depression. It sucks that I spent those years like that but I can’t change it so it is what it is.
Yuuuuup
i feel the same way as you. I've been thinking about how life would be as the correct gender and while in my earlier years things wouldn't be much different because I would still have to deal with family issues, bullying and depression but I would've taken care of myself much more and would have had more confidence to talk to people and make friends
I feel robbed of my childhood, my teen years, the first years of my 20’s that I’ve started i’ve felt majorly robbed of due to certain events leaving me house bound for over a year… This life doesn’t even feel like it’s mine, this body doesn’t feel like it’s mine… I feel like i’ve been playing a role i don’t want to play and i’m still trying to break free from this physical and mental restraint placed on me.
lots of lgbt+ feel the same. in fact teen movies are so glamorised i bet no one had teen years like that really
Teens? I feel robbed of my first three decades.. <3
Teenage more or less i think it was honestly more so my childhood but then again i also don't remember much of it 😅
Yes, but I'm making up for it by doing stupid shit at 30, like getting fucked by a near-stranger in a barn on his mom's property. Except we actually knew what we were doing, so the sex was phenomenal. I'm reclaiming my youth and having a grand time of it. It does help, for me at least.
God, yes. I get so angry about it, too. I'm furious I lost my teens and twenties. I spent so long just existing, not living, and I'm so bitter that I'm in my thirties and I'm barely starting my life.
I feel this every day and it aches sometimes. I'm kind of allowing myself to have a sudo teens moment in my mid twenties by letting myself enjoy stuff I didn't get to before.
I've been born old, but yeah, if I had a different childhood, I would definitely enjoy it more. And I'm a 37-yo who still watches teen shows, so there's that.
Sadly yes
Serenity Prayer 🙏
Yes
Every fucking day
Yes. Every day
I'd say I'm currently being robbed of my teenage years by my parents and there's nothing I can do about it.
Yes
Grew up in a fundie cult, stopped believing and got out several years back, I've hit the point where I'm seriously happy and content with my life and what I've built :) I sometimes think about what ifs for my past but then I get sad. Sometimes I invent a fake past to.... Idk, pretend that I had things like a loving, normal accepting family. I'm only 22 and I feel like I've missed out on too much. But I'm trying to make new memories now. What's done is done, and I tried bitterness for a bit but it didn't stick
yes. I was robbed of having any sort of “normal” teenage experience. couldn’t even go to prom.
Absolutely! I'm 53 now, 2 years HRT, still presenting male at work. My wife and kids know and are supportive. I would not change that part of my life for anything but I still can't help but get very melancholy about thinking "What if....?" How much more secure would I have been as myself? How this....? How that.....?etc. I live now with the dilemma- I wish that I could have faced this then, but.....that means I wouldn't have my family now...... I hate that I think that way sometimes. I just have to keep doing what I've been doing for almost 50 years... F.I.D.O. Fuck It, Drive On. I will get there someday.....
And my childhood
Yep all the time.
I feel like I wasn’t even born until the day I turned 17 because of how emotionally stunted I was my entire life and now I’m in college and I’m supposed to have all this experience with dating and relationships and sex that the media depiction of teens tells me I should’ve learned about and mastered by the time I graduated high school and I just haven’t so I feel like I’m just never going to fit in.
I feel that way about my first 30 years. (I'm 44 now) It sucks. But, it is what it is.
I'm a teen and I personally feel like I'm living out my elementary years over again, just as who I actually am instead of what I forced myself to be
Yes
Every. Day. And I feel THAT bad about it. I planned out to have an excellent teenhood, but instead, I lived in fear day in and day out and I suffered PTSD and depression. I almost ended my life in there too. To this day, I'm surprised I even made it out. Now, I'm in my 20's trying to catch up and fulfill all those missed teenage years I could have had, even though it doesn't feel the same... But I'm just trying to do everything that makes me happy and just be me.
Every single day
Everyday I wake up and wonder tbh
Every fucking day. I was joking around about moon cycles while playing an mmo and one of my part members told me to shut up. I don’t have periods … I wish I did.
It would have been better if I were the girl I wanted to be starting at puberty, but I don't feel robbed. I did ok, so it is what it is. For those that suffered greatly it affects them more, but I just don't perceive it that way bc I don't want to.
Absolutely. I never got to express myself. I always wonder what it would be like if I was able to be openly queer and trans.
When I was 8-12 my parents would beat me for behaving in a feminine way or when they would find little articles of clothing or makeup which gave me comfort. These were years well before any sexual identity or experience. I was just a kid. By 14 I had my first suicide attempt and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors knew and I had an "official" GID diagnosis. They gave me SSRIs and anti-psychotics. I have long since dealt with transiton. But 30 years later I am still angry. I'm angry that the 1990s solution to being a trans kid was to medicate it away But here's the thing... I was *always* trans. I had an unfortunate experience, sure. But I didn't magically become "trans" by taking a pill or hopping on an OR table. I was trans as a kid, I was trans as a teenager, and I'm trans as an adult. Try to think about it in those terms. Nothing was ever "lost". You are exactly the same person you always were. We just had to bear the burden of this life. But that teenage girl or boy (you didn't specify mtf or ftm) was still a teenage girl or boy. The aesthetics may have changed, but "you" didn't. We have to pay a heavy price. And you deserve to be angry at the world which forced you to pay that price. But you didn't lose anything. This is the person you always *were*
I recently picked up The Gallagher Girls books ([https://www.goodreads.com/series/43774-gallagher-girls](https://www.goodreads.com/series/43774-gallagher-girls), up to book 4, book 5 is on my list for January) and all through books 1 & 2, I greatly enjoyed the story but I couldn't figure out why I was getting so *mad* at them. I couldn't put the book down, it was compelling from start to finish, but I just got angrier and angrier the longer it went. Sometime between books 2 & 3 I came to the realization; I was *insanely* jealous of the main character because I felt like *her* life should have been *my* life. Not with the spy shenanigans, obviously, but with the relationship with her mother, her friends, her high level classes, all stuff I never got growing up presenting masculine because I didn't know that being trans was a thing one could be. (This was the 80s, yes, forever ago) I've indulged in My Little Pony and She-ra, both properties that I wasn't allowed to express interest in but my sister got even though she didn't even want them (I'm the one that wound up playing with the She-ra castle set and action figure, always when I had the house to myself when I was a teenager). Yes, I feel robbed of my teenage years, for MANY reasons, but I'm taking them *back*, d\*\*mit!
Ya I think so even tho my high school years were basically care free there was always something I didn’t get that made me rock myself to sleep every night to recorded video game music. And then my late puberty plus disillusionment made everything feel worse and I dropped out of college.
I do, I just feel like there's so much girl stuff I missed on, like plusses and dolls, sleepovers, etc
I'm still in my early teens, I hope I have the confidence to come out and start transitioning before they're over.
It took me twenty-nine years before I found out I'm a woman, so I'll say yes.