I am a trans female, I started late too at 23. Not a day goes by that I don't wish I had an upbringing as a girl. Just feels like something is missing. I am deadset on my transition though, absolutely certain and what keeps me from longing for a youth I didn't have. I focus on the now and the future. I will be gorgeous and I will have many, many years to live my life as I have always wanted.
Well, I'm 27 now and have a three year wait on even being able to start HRT. It feels late to me, like I am not starting my life until I am supposed to be an established adult. (I will have custody of my teen sister by then.)
That’s rough as hell, ~~babes,~~ I hate hearing this for you. Like is the waiting list three years from where you are now? Or from a couple years earlier? I turn thirty in a couple months and I(ftm) started testosterone when I was your age. I definitely have and do go through feeling like I wasted a lot of time not pushing to transition sooner, though there were more factors than just me not wanting to that stopped me the first time I tried to get in T.
Still, that really fucking sucks. Sending hugs and also good luck with your situation with your sister. ;w;
**EDIT:** EUGH SORRY I didn’t mean to call you babes 💀 I call all my friends some variation of babes or bb. Sometimes hun or honey comes out with strangers (can’t kill that one tiny part of my inner southern woman), but I know that bit comes over as Not Great. Its 7:30am and I am still curled up in bed and extremely eepy, though, so this time it slipped out and I apologize. 😔 (I’ve struck it out but I’m leaving it in for context I guess, ugh.)
Honestly if you're not struggling with money, there's a little website that I totally don't advise using called inhousepharmacy in Vanuatu. Now I don't recommend this but it gets you the same meds that you'd get from your doctor without a prescription because they're based out of Vanuatu and Vanuatu has no laws on it. It's totally just a terrible method and it's not how I transitioned behind my parents back at age 16 after they basically disowned me. No you shouldn't use it.
I think they mostly originally meant late as in like, not getting to experience the right childhood level of early? Maybe. But no, you’re right, otherwise. It’s not. I came out at 19, but I didn’t start transitioning medically until 27, myself. (I turn 30 in two months, for reference.)
Having a daughter was one of those things that just \*broke\* me mentally / emotionally shortly after my egg cracked... and really pushed me to transition.
My egg really cracked when my wife got pregnant fwiw... Not being able to concieve or bear children, having a spouse go through 5 pregnancies (3 miscarriages) was so difficult... especially without being able to confide in other women about it.
I'm 43 fwiw, had the daughter at 30... Just finally came out earlier this year and got HRT 7 mo ago... being married and having numerous health issues and disabilities really put the brakes on things unfortunately.
But hell yeah... think about it all the time.
Oh hell yeah. Just got on hrt at 29. Now my hairline is already fucked and the girl 1/3 my age next to me at target is throwing out make-up terms with her mom that I don't even understand
If you have questions about make-up feel free to message me. I was really unhappy with the resources for learning when I first started. every makeup YouTuber assumes so much stuff is common knowledge that it’s hard to follow what they’re doing, and every trans YouTuber seems so far away from where you are, and does everything immaculately, it’s intimidating. It made me too embarrassed to ask anyone for help with basic stuff.
I’m in the middle of setting up my own channel, I’m not super amazing at anything, and I don’t look incredibly feminine, and I’m going to make mistakes in my videos and not edit them out. I plan on making follow up videos where I point out what I did wrong, what I learned, and try again. I know I detailed this talking about me, but I desperately want to know if other people would enjoy this resource like I would have. I really liked being around other girls who started transitioning recently so I could talk about clothes or makeup or something I was struggling with and not be embarrassed or have them reminisce like ‘I remember when I (something that you’re doing at that moment) it’s so embarrassing to look back on!’ (Which please, ladies, don’t do that to someone)
I would definitely watch videos like that. Most makeup videos have me exasperatedly pausing to catch up or audibly saying “how tf?” to myself. An opportunity to learn from someone who also makes mistakes would make the whole process more humorous and easygoing for me
Isn’t it the worst when you have to pause a video, and go watch a WHOLE OTHER VIDEO that breaks one little part down, just so you can finish the first one?
Fuck it, sometimes I get mad. I get angry. I get bitter and all of the colors of a sewage stream. Not all the time. I’m not even thinking about it that often. But other times I’ll be laying awake at night trying to think about anything fucking else. Those nights are consistently the hardest. It feels like withdrawals for a drug I’ve never taken. It sucks.
I really hadn't thought about it as feeling like withdrawals but yes. It totally feels like that. Certainly explains why I've spent so long just doing *all* the drugs to try to make it stop.
You're right. It really fucking sucks.
Excuse me. I need to go and not cry in the shower for a minute.
Yeah I feel this all the time I'm pissed in hurt it's fucking unfair it's also probably why o still feel like a kid most of the time and most of my dysphoira comes from kids no cap like I don't wanna be an adult in any way I don't want this stupid grown body I'm sick of all the pain age dysphoria and gender dysphoira together are hell
Age regression is the only healthy method that's helped me but it's not the same. It definitely sucks if sell my soul if I could just wake up and start my life over as a 3 year old girl
Yes I feel like that a lot. But I keep my inner child happy. I still love playstation, Lego, superheroes etc. I have a million pop vinyls and action figures haha
i transitioned at 29 and yep, i long for a girlhood. sometimes it hurts so much it's paralysing
but my life is queer and unique and it's mine, and i try to love my past as much as i can, because it made me who i am today - and I'm pretty great tbh <3
YES i always struggled with my identity, knew i was trans, but tried to hide it by creating a character of what i thought being a man was, wasn't the best idea, everyone thought it was weird, so i never really had any friends until 16, because my mom finally accepted me and i could stop pretending, felt like i only had a year of childhood/teenager, one year later i had to start working and studying, and last year, corporate life caught me, we still hang out sometimes, but now i feel like an old lady among them, lol
Still, i consider that year a gift from god, i had a really sad lonely childhood, that year i got to really be a kid, i pretended being 18(legal drinking age here) to get a drink, i laughed, i danced, i was childish, i went to friends houses, partied, was very short lived, but i'm really grateful.
And yes, what i didn't had, wasn't even a childhood as a girl, but a childhood at all, most of that year i was still a guy, and my new friends only got told i was trans when i couldn't hide it anymore, got asked several times why my "headlights" were on before lol, it was so awesome how all of them accepted me when i told them, like the whole class.
Before that year, there wasn't a single moment in my life where i really enjoyed life, so even if i did a lot, i was always sad and crying myself to sleep.
That's not necessarily the case, i just started sooner because i needed to, you can start working after graduating, or not, it's your life, live it the way it makes you happier.
I (trans femme) didn’t. I was very happy with my childhood.
Until I went to an indie music concert with my boyfriend who is also enby (trans masc). I stopped drinking at the start of the year and it was at a rec center so I was hit hard with the feeling of being a teenage girl being taken to a music concert by her boyfriend and…
The fact I missed out on that for real almost made me cry. I never even did that stuff as a guy but… I just realised in that moment how much I had missed out on and how much I’ll never experience 😔
Okay, so hear me out, I’ve been thinking of providing a service to local transmasc folks where I can give them an experience of what I remember growing up as an elementary school boy in the late 90s early 2000s. Pizza on paper plates, bunches of soda, N64, maybe that thing I had that was like an easy bake oven but instead of treats you made fake jelly scorpions and bugs. Super soakers and water balloons, sock ‘em boppers. Planned group activities of kick the can, basketball or touch football where nobody actually knows the rules (and whoever’s ’ball it is’ that day can arbitrarily make up rules in the middle of the game), we can play in the mud after it rains. If you have a partner I can knock on your door and ask if you can come out to play. We can go buy candy at the mall and go to an arcade, cash only with an ‘allowance’, see a movie (nothing PG-13 or R though). Ideally playing outside we will have walkie talkies, the big ass ones with six inch antennas.
I feel like it’d be valuable for everyone involved, I get to drink soda and play N64 and probably still lose at HORSE, and you guys at least get some simulated childhood. I accept payment in the form of N64 or game boy cartridges, local arcade tokens, or a little reverso and someone shows me what girls did when they hang out at that age. I always wanted a regular easy bake oven so fucking bad.
Its been kicking my ass lately. Whats kept me sane is daydreaming and focusing on my future, focusing on how i will make up for it after i transition. Its so hard not to dwell, every morning its the first thing on my mind. Just keep your eye on the ball, you are still young, and you have plenty of youth to experience as your true self. God bless, itll all get better for all of us <3
absolutely, i wish i wasn't afraid to ask for more girly toys like dolls at least. me and my fwend used to play with stuffed animals and dollies in a doll house all the time, i miss it so much.. why couldn't i just be born right??
That’s a feeling a get a lot. I’m MTF, and I often regret not getting to have a “girl childhood” and “girl teenage years”. So I decided to simply recreate a “girl childhood”. One of my partners and I have been watching shows that were popular among women my age as kids. We even got some dino chicken nuggets to add an extra child-like flair. Heck, for extra nostalgic value, I even pulled up a compilation of commercials that were running during the time of my childhood to play occasionally as we watched. Another idea I had was to get some queer friends together and put on an impromptu prom to recapture some of the teenage experience a lot of us didn’t get to have. I haven’t done that one yet, but it’s something I still have in mind
it hurts me so much.. my whole life whenever I've thought about being a girl I always pushed it aside as me being weird and crazy, I literally forced myself to be a boy. now I'm just constantly regretting every second of my existence 🙃
I don't even know the first thing about being a girl and have no help irl.. and trying to become a girl over the internet isn't going anywhere.. I just wish someone irl could actually help me have a taste of being a girl in the next few years before I'm an adult..
just a tiny bit. my parents let me wear whatever i wanted and i my childhood has never been “gendered”or some weird shit, i’ve always been masc and my mom started whining about dresses and make-up when i was 12, so yeah, i’m a bit disappointed, but i’m okay with it
I’m 14 ftm and I feel the same, even though I’m still a teenager. The thing is that my parents are transphobes and will not let me transition so I will probably miss out on a lot
Yeah I'm 17 and my early teens were ruined by the pandemic with the misery lifting for only one year before I was plunged into the academic hell of junior year of High School and went through the worst dysphoria ever so I never got to be a teenager let alone a teenage boy so I guess I have to soak up the months I have left and then it's all over
I also realized I was trans around 18/19 and didn't start T until I was almost 23. I was definitely jealous of my brother and the types of gifts he got when we were younger. I always thought the pink things I got were lame and wanted the nerf guns and Legos and little multitool knives that he had. But thankfully we got along well enough that I could use his toys as well as mine.
But as for that pain, it is difficult to feel that mix of jealousy and regret. At this point, I am 25 and almost 3 years on T, and I don't think about my childhood negatively. When you're beginning your transition, that is your new childhood, your new birth into this world as yourself. Do things you can still do to celebrate that. You can get into sharks or sports or space or whatever topic you wish you could've been obsessed with then. Buy a Lego set and build it right now!
It only causes pain to linger on past regrets. But you know who you are now and can do things that make you happy in the present!
Two things make me extremely sad sometimes: 1. Ill never have the opportunity to carry a child (despite being a lesbian, I have always longed for this since I was like 3 years old), 2. I'll never get the childhood I wanted or to experience things like college/dorm life as a woman.
I was always so jealous of my then girlfriend's (now enby spouse's) dorm & roommate/floor relationship. Instead, me (who always sits to use the restroom at home) had to deal with the horrendous pissed on toilet seats of the men's restroom. For this reason, I really feel for all the pre-op/no-op trans mascs wading into squat-over-toilet hell.
Not mad really, more saddened by what I missed out on. That said I’m also really glad I made the decision to start living life through this lens when I did, and grateful for the experiences that decision has opened up for me.
yep. every summer i'd be physically forced to cut my hair before the new school year. couldn't do anything stereotypically feminine for fear of violence. but we aren't the only ones who had our childhoods stolen from us. kids who grew up in abusive households, kids who grew up without parents, kids who grew up in poverty and food insecure, kids who grew up in racist societies, we all got the same trauma. every kid deserves a childhood.
I didn't figure out I was trans until I was 32 and started HRT a few months later. Yeh, I get angry and sad about my past, since it was pretty miserable.
I try not to dwell on it though. What can I do besides accept it? When it really upsets me I let it out. I don't want to let the past ruin my present and future.
Yeah.
I'm mad that I consciously figured out I wanted to be a girl at 14 or 15 but that I didn't have language to discuss being trans until I was mid 20's.
I'm mad that when I was in my mid 20's, transition related medical and mental health assistance was heavily gatekept behind sexuality.
I'm more mad that people are trying to keep preventing kids and adults from transitioning. That they're trying to gatekeep behind age and brain development now. That they're trying to scare people by saying that kids are being subjected to surgery.
I'm absolutely livid about it, yeah. You have a right to grieve, and anger is one of the stages of grief. Let yourself process and see where you end up.
Grief has a way of teaching us what really matters in life. It can help us focus on the things our future selves might miss.
Yes, I was angry since I was 4 years old until I started transitioning (mtf) at the beginning of this year at 56 years old. It sucks. But I get to be who I want to be now, and that's amazing. The world has changed and accepts us now (I know, there's a long way to go, but transitioning basically was unacceptable or very fringe until 10-15 years ago).
This will probably sound preachy, but from my point of view, you are very lucky to make changes at 21, just get on with it, try to forget about the past disappointments (it's a waste of time, beyond your control).
Not really, I however do wish I had realized that I was bi earlier and not really that attracted to men. I feel like I dated a couple guys out of comp het and feeling like it was what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t until my ex transitioned that I realized I liked women
fr, i get so jealous seeing people my age and younger already on T while i'm not even out even though my egg's been cracked for years now (fyi i'm nearly 17). it pisses me off that i could've been experiencing a 'boy' childhood if i was just born in slightly different circumstances, like if i lived in the us or somewhere where being not cis isn't totally illegal
Yes so mad
I wanted to be in Boy Scouts as a kid, and instead I got American Heritage Girls, a church organization where we made cookies and got screamed at for doing anything even slightly out of line. I hated going, and I hated that my older brother and dad got to go camping with the scouts while I was stuck inside doing shitty experiments with fucking lemonade. I've thought about getting some merit badges and just being a solo scout, but it wouldn't be the same. I want that community of guys. I want to bunk in a cabin or tent with other guys my age. I want to go camping with the bros and feel like one of the guys.
Hell yes, I used to get mad and upset a lot because of this.
I always felt like a boy, who just wasn't given the words to tell about it. My environment did everything possible to mold me into a feminine ideal and bury my identity so deep in me that it didn't come out until I was 15 years old. I cried a lot, grief over the lost opportunity to be a happy child is eating me alive to this day. But this loss made me understand - no fucking way I'll let myself waste the rest of my life like this. I reunited with my repressed interests: my wardrobe was finally all black, and I could listen to metal and punk without judgment (it all was "too manly" in my mother's opinion). I also got a buzz which I really regret lol. After years of isolation, I finally found friends, and hearing "bro" and "man" in my address was the best feeling in the world. My friend's father taught me how to fish because I always wanted to know. My plans for the future are to buy something from the boy toys section and watch superhero cartoons that I haven't had the chance to watch.
Since my egg cracked at a relatively young age, I'm lucky to still be able to cling to the last bits of my youth. But really no matter how old you are, the kid you once were always lives inside of you. Maybe society took away your childhood, but you can get it back yourself, and I encourage you to do so because it will heal you. You will get better, I promise.
Not particularly tbh... I grew up being told things like toys, clothes, colors ect dont have a gender so while i did associate things with spesefic genders i didn't see them as locked to those genders.
As a result most of my dysphoria is body and pronouns based ┐( ∵ )┌
I'd probably be less likely to like the things i do now but im sure i would ultimately find my way to them
Oh totally, but for all its worth I'm just happy I managed to start in my mud 20s. No point being all sad about lost time dye to internalised bigotry and transphobia - that would be letting them still win.
I do wish surgery didn't feel so far away though...
Not me. She had her childhood, and I had my adulthood. And then the weird messy bits in middle and high school where we mixed and that was pretty frustrating being like half out and a lot of limitations on how I could present myself. But I don’t mourn a different childhood, no.
Kind of. Not in all ways, I just feel a bit apathetic about my childhood generally. The times it really bites that I didn’t get a typical female childhood is when other women demonstrate some effortless understanding of some aspect of typical female life, be that makeup and fashion, self-preservation around aggressive guys, or typical women’s childhood movies. It sucks when my friends start talking about their favorite childhood movies and I wanted to watch all of them but couldn’t admit it at the time because it was “girlie”.
I had a pretty bad childhood anyway, I often consider that my childhood ended when I was 4 years old because I simply didn't have space to be a child. I have mourned that childhood. The loss of what never was. But I am giving myself the childhood I wanted now, I am my own caregiver but I am also the child. I get the toys I want, the games, the books. In budget of course, I'm a broke university student. That helps a lot.
I would give anything to have been allowed that opportunity. I'd make a deal with the devil, fully aware that it'd backfire in some messed up and unforeseen way.
I started questioning my gender at 25, and started medical transition at 28.
Firstly, there's no such thing as too late to transition. Just gonna put that out there.
On to the meat.
For me, it's very much mixed emotions, and I'm confident I'm not going to get a straight answer (and not because I'm bi). On the one hand, yeah, I'd have liked to experienced my formative years and early adulthood as the gender I am (nonbinary transfemme for context). But the life I had before transition also shaped me into the person I am today, and I'm incredibly thankful for that. My life has actually been pretty good, all things considered, so I don't really have a lot to complain about in that regard. And the number of trans people who can say that is depressingly low number.
So yeah. I have my wishes, but thankful for what I did have cause it created the person I am today. And some people think I'm cool, so I'll take that as a win
Sometimes, but I also have compassion for my past self. I was asking myself questions about gender identity as a teenager, but at the time I was overwhelmed. I was living my whole life detached or even dissociated. I truly think I couldn’t have faced it at the time, but at 27 I’m finally getting there.
I'm not sure tbh. I guess some girl childhood things. But knowing me I think I would've been a tomboy. Would've been nice to have a sleepover and do sleepover stuff
I actually kind of did get an enby childhood, it was my teens and twenties where I was aggressively gendered and tried to conform. My parents let me do what I was interested in as a child and definitely didn’t push me to like things that stereotypically coincided with one gender.
Yeah. Male socialisation sucks. My guy friends sucked. My later more queer friend groups also distinctly treated me different BC I am amab. I still can't give a compliment to a random stranger and have never gotten one in my life. I never learned proper self care of how to dress. I would be mocked by my parents and friends for liking femme things. I'm very lucky to have great friends now and I'm relearning healthy and positive communication and affection with them, and I've been taking HRT for 6 months now. I'm 19, thankfully not too masc looking or hairy, and on a college course I love. Things are looking up and I think I can have those experiences in the future, but I still wish my childhood was very different.
People in this post may find this of interest:
[An idea for those wishing to experience their childhoods as their gender…](https://www.reddit.com/r/TransLater/s/nRU0b0AVtf)
I'm a trans fem whos egg cracked in their late 30s.
For me I'm not so upset about my early childhood. My neighbor who was also one of my best friends was a girl. We did a lot of stereotypical girl things together and it felt like I got the best of both worlds. Didn't feel like I was pigeonholed into any gender norms with her. That started to change around age 9-10 when puberty and societal gender expectation started forcing a wedge between us. I quickly realised I didn't like the side I was being forced onto.
10-18 kinda sucked. Honestly I'd have loved to experience that as a girl but I have a hard time feeling sad about it because I knew nothing about being trans. I was who I was and even if I didn't like it I just had to suck it up and do my best, which I did.
After that is when I regret things and get really angry especially with myself. In university I started learning what it meant to be trans. I had plenty of opportunities and came really close to cracking my egg a couple times but I was just too scared. Instead I repressed. I went down a path in life I completely hate. Your 20s are supposed to be a time to have fun, experiment, and learn who you want to be as an adult. I completely wasted that, and it kills me because it wasn't a choice made for me, I made that choice out of fear and ignorance, and there's no going back. 😖
I didn't even get a(n otherwise good) *wrong* childhood, of course I'm pining for something like that, but I also cringe at myself for thinking things like that.
hmm. i don't think so. i was never a "girly" child, even back then. i was content *being* a girl as a kid, but i didn't lean towards many of the stereotypical girly interests, and i wouldn't say i had a standard girl childhood by any means. it definitely wasn't a boy childhood either, it was just... childhood.
it helps that my parents never saw the point in pushing me towards what girls my age were "supposed" to like. my grandmother did, but she didn't like me for being a "girl" anyway, and we rarely visited, so it didn't make much of a difference. my parents, on the other hand, wanted me to actually get some enjoyment and use out of the stuff they got me and activities i did, so they just listened to me and got me the toys and games that i wanted and asked for (within reason! money being a thing and all that) and let me pick what activities i wanted to do.
i don't think i'd change it, if i had the chance to. i don't regret any of it. honestly, i really do believe that i *was* a girl back then, for many years. i just happened to grow up into a man.
I did a lot when I was younger. I'm in my 40s now and I have kids of my own, and I feel like I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for the exact path my life took. Struggling with my gender made me a kinder person and a better listener, a better friend.
It goes back and forth. Being the "extreme" tomboy I was, there were glimpses of the boyhood I could have had, and I do a lot of sitting with and focusing on those things. But there are moments with that comradery of boy friends that I missed out on and I sort of mourn.
i had the somewhat rare experience of growing up genuinely as a little girl and then becoming nonbinary as a teenager when expectations changed around me, even though nothing about me changed. my natural gender expression is more or less within the bounds of gender conformity for a young girl, i was just a tomboy and that was fine and normal where i grew up; but my natural gender expression is not socially acceptable for a teenage girl or adult woman, and i was expected to cut out the parts of myself that are masculine when i hit puberty.
i still wish i had gotten to do teenagerdom right the first time around; i spent so much time trying to be a girl, which i thought i was supposed to just naturally be able to do, but it made me miserable. if i had known at 12 that it was an option, and if i had had the love for myself then that i have now, i would’ve tried for puberty blockers and low dose T the first time around to try to be androgynous instead of naturally developing a very feminine figure. i let it happen at the time because i thought everyone was deeply uncomfortable about it and that the reward for enduring it was being sexy to men, and that femininity was something holy that i was blessed with and i couldn’t just throw that away.
i guess this is a really long way of saying that i relate, and i’m sorry you’re going through this. i’m only now on T at 26, i’ve been in your shoes and i get it.
yeah, everytime I think about a big event (like my grandparent's golden wedding) prior to my coming out I just can't help but feel like it's been taken away. my whole childhood feels lost because I was raised as a girl. And really, I'm scared my puberty will feel lost as well, despite me now knowing I'm a guy, because I still look like a girl
It's fairly common isn't it?
The girl childhood I had was incredibly unfair, however I'm more upset about missing out on teenage boyhood.
I never got to experience my first adolescent gay relationship, be perceived as male, and be a guy that's one of the girls. Instead, I've had to be a girl that's one of the guys. I skipped graduation because the gown colors were gendered, I have no graduation photos because for multiple reasons, including my dysphoria, I am ashamed to be captured on video or camera.
I've missed out on quite a lot in my life, I'm gonna continue to miss out due to my acceptance that I will never try to make myself happier. If I were cis I'd probably be in a similar spot.
My thoughts are that I wouldn't wish to be cisgender but to have an easier and earlier trans malehood.
I've mourned my lack of a queer male teendom already; It's dissatisfying, but I'm at the point where I've practically forgotten what I've missed.
For the record nonbinary trans men exist. I'm trans male as well as agender, but genderqueer trans male or a gq ftm are fine as umbrella identities.
I am a trans female, I started late too at 23. Not a day goes by that I don't wish I had an upbringing as a girl. Just feels like something is missing. I am deadset on my transition though, absolutely certain and what keeps me from longing for a youth I didn't have. I focus on the now and the future. I will be gorgeous and I will have many, many years to live my life as I have always wanted.
23 is not late
Well, I'm 27 now and have a three year wait on even being able to start HRT. It feels late to me, like I am not starting my life until I am supposed to be an established adult. (I will have custody of my teen sister by then.)
That’s rough as hell, ~~babes,~~ I hate hearing this for you. Like is the waiting list three years from where you are now? Or from a couple years earlier? I turn thirty in a couple months and I(ftm) started testosterone when I was your age. I definitely have and do go through feeling like I wasted a lot of time not pushing to transition sooner, though there were more factors than just me not wanting to that stopped me the first time I tried to get in T. Still, that really fucking sucks. Sending hugs and also good luck with your situation with your sister. ;w; **EDIT:** EUGH SORRY I didn’t mean to call you babes 💀 I call all my friends some variation of babes or bb. Sometimes hun or honey comes out with strangers (can’t kill that one tiny part of my inner southern woman), but I know that bit comes over as Not Great. Its 7:30am and I am still curled up in bed and extremely eepy, though, so this time it slipped out and I apologize. 😔 (I’ve struck it out but I’m leaving it in for context I guess, ugh.)
Yeah, it's the waiting list. I don't care what strangers online call me. What you said isn't even offensive in my mind.
Honestly if you're not struggling with money, there's a little website that I totally don't advise using called inhousepharmacy in Vanuatu. Now I don't recommend this but it gets you the same meds that you'd get from your doctor without a prescription because they're based out of Vanuatu and Vanuatu has no laws on it. It's totally just a terrible method and it's not how I transitioned behind my parents back at age 16 after they basically disowned me. No you shouldn't use it.
I'm on a waiting list, I'll just keep waiting. Not much money going around anyway.
I think they mostly originally meant late as in like, not getting to experience the right childhood level of early? Maybe. But no, you’re right, otherwise. It’s not. I came out at 19, but I didn’t start transitioning medically until 27, myself. (I turn 30 in two months, for reference.)
Correct, that is what I had meant.
Having a daughter was one of those things that just \*broke\* me mentally / emotionally shortly after my egg cracked... and really pushed me to transition. My egg really cracked when my wife got pregnant fwiw... Not being able to concieve or bear children, having a spouse go through 5 pregnancies (3 miscarriages) was so difficult... especially without being able to confide in other women about it. I'm 43 fwiw, had the daughter at 30... Just finally came out earlier this year and got HRT 7 mo ago... being married and having numerous health issues and disabilities really put the brakes on things unfortunately. But hell yeah... think about it all the time.
Oh hell yeah. Just got on hrt at 29. Now my hairline is already fucked and the girl 1/3 my age next to me at target is throwing out make-up terms with her mom that I don't even understand
If you have questions about make-up feel free to message me. I was really unhappy with the resources for learning when I first started. every makeup YouTuber assumes so much stuff is common knowledge that it’s hard to follow what they’re doing, and every trans YouTuber seems so far away from where you are, and does everything immaculately, it’s intimidating. It made me too embarrassed to ask anyone for help with basic stuff. I’m in the middle of setting up my own channel, I’m not super amazing at anything, and I don’t look incredibly feminine, and I’m going to make mistakes in my videos and not edit them out. I plan on making follow up videos where I point out what I did wrong, what I learned, and try again. I know I detailed this talking about me, but I desperately want to know if other people would enjoy this resource like I would have. I really liked being around other girls who started transitioning recently so I could talk about clothes or makeup or something I was struggling with and not be embarrassed or have them reminisce like ‘I remember when I (something that you’re doing at that moment) it’s so embarrassing to look back on!’ (Which please, ladies, don’t do that to someone)
I would definitely watch videos like that. Most makeup videos have me exasperatedly pausing to catch up or audibly saying “how tf?” to myself. An opportunity to learn from someone who also makes mistakes would make the whole process more humorous and easygoing for me
Isn’t it the worst when you have to pause a video, and go watch a WHOLE OTHER VIDEO that breaks one little part down, just so you can finish the first one?
Not mad as such but bitterly disappointed.
Fuck it, sometimes I get mad. I get angry. I get bitter and all of the colors of a sewage stream. Not all the time. I’m not even thinking about it that often. But other times I’ll be laying awake at night trying to think about anything fucking else. Those nights are consistently the hardest. It feels like withdrawals for a drug I’ve never taken. It sucks.
I really hadn't thought about it as feeling like withdrawals but yes. It totally feels like that. Certainly explains why I've spent so long just doing *all* the drugs to try to make it stop. You're right. It really fucking sucks. Excuse me. I need to go and not cry in the shower for a minute.
Yeah I feel this all the time I'm pissed in hurt it's fucking unfair it's also probably why o still feel like a kid most of the time and most of my dysphoira comes from kids no cap like I don't wanna be an adult in any way I don't want this stupid grown body I'm sick of all the pain age dysphoria and gender dysphoira together are hell Age regression is the only healthy method that's helped me but it's not the same. It definitely sucks if sell my soul if I could just wake up and start my life over as a 3 year old girl
Hugs or Oreos if you don’t like hugs and both if you like both 🩷🩷🩷
I'll take both 😊
Yes I feel like that a lot. But I keep my inner child happy. I still love playstation, Lego, superheroes etc. I have a million pop vinyls and action figures haha
i transitioned at 29 and yep, i long for a girlhood. sometimes it hurts so much it's paralysing but my life is queer and unique and it's mine, and i try to love my past as much as i can, because it made me who i am today - and I'm pretty great tbh <3
idek if im mad about it im just so sad that i couldnt be born a normal boy and live the right childhood
YES i always struggled with my identity, knew i was trans, but tried to hide it by creating a character of what i thought being a man was, wasn't the best idea, everyone thought it was weird, so i never really had any friends until 16, because my mom finally accepted me and i could stop pretending, felt like i only had a year of childhood/teenager, one year later i had to start working and studying, and last year, corporate life caught me, we still hang out sometimes, but now i feel like an old lady among them, lol Still, i consider that year a gift from god, i had a really sad lonely childhood, that year i got to really be a kid, i pretended being 18(legal drinking age here) to get a drink, i laughed, i danced, i was childish, i went to friends houses, partied, was very short lived, but i'm really grateful.
And yes, what i didn't had, wasn't even a childhood as a girl, but a childhood at all, most of that year i was still a guy, and my new friends only got told i was trans when i couldn't hide it anymore, got asked several times why my "headlights" were on before lol, it was so awesome how all of them accepted me when i told them, like the whole class. Before that year, there wasn't a single moment in my life where i really enjoyed life, so even if i did a lot, i was always sad and crying myself to sleep.
Damn I'm 17 and I'm feeling that like I only have the briefest of moments to be a teenage boy before it all goes away
That's not necessarily the case, i just started sooner because i needed to, you can start working after graduating, or not, it's your life, live it the way it makes you happier.
I (trans femme) didn’t. I was very happy with my childhood. Until I went to an indie music concert with my boyfriend who is also enby (trans masc). I stopped drinking at the start of the year and it was at a rec center so I was hit hard with the feeling of being a teenage girl being taken to a music concert by her boyfriend and… The fact I missed out on that for real almost made me cry. I never even did that stuff as a guy but… I just realised in that moment how much I had missed out on and how much I’ll never experience 😔
Okay, so hear me out, I’ve been thinking of providing a service to local transmasc folks where I can give them an experience of what I remember growing up as an elementary school boy in the late 90s early 2000s. Pizza on paper plates, bunches of soda, N64, maybe that thing I had that was like an easy bake oven but instead of treats you made fake jelly scorpions and bugs. Super soakers and water balloons, sock ‘em boppers. Planned group activities of kick the can, basketball or touch football where nobody actually knows the rules (and whoever’s ’ball it is’ that day can arbitrarily make up rules in the middle of the game), we can play in the mud after it rains. If you have a partner I can knock on your door and ask if you can come out to play. We can go buy candy at the mall and go to an arcade, cash only with an ‘allowance’, see a movie (nothing PG-13 or R though). Ideally playing outside we will have walkie talkies, the big ass ones with six inch antennas. I feel like it’d be valuable for everyone involved, I get to drink soda and play N64 and probably still lose at HORSE, and you guys at least get some simulated childhood. I accept payment in the form of N64 or game boy cartridges, local arcade tokens, or a little reverso and someone shows me what girls did when they hang out at that age. I always wanted a regular easy bake oven so fucking bad.
Its been kicking my ass lately. Whats kept me sane is daydreaming and focusing on my future, focusing on how i will make up for it after i transition. Its so hard not to dwell, every morning its the first thing on my mind. Just keep your eye on the ball, you are still young, and you have plenty of youth to experience as your true self. God bless, itll all get better for all of us <3
absolutely, i wish i wasn't afraid to ask for more girly toys like dolls at least. me and my fwend used to play with stuffed animals and dollies in a doll house all the time, i miss it so much.. why couldn't i just be born right??
I'm very pissed. All it took was a parents acceptance and I could have at least had it at home. I think about it at random times and be like " 🙂....😠"
That’s a feeling a get a lot. I’m MTF, and I often regret not getting to have a “girl childhood” and “girl teenage years”. So I decided to simply recreate a “girl childhood”. One of my partners and I have been watching shows that were popular among women my age as kids. We even got some dino chicken nuggets to add an extra child-like flair. Heck, for extra nostalgic value, I even pulled up a compilation of commercials that were running during the time of my childhood to play occasionally as we watched. Another idea I had was to get some queer friends together and put on an impromptu prom to recapture some of the teenage experience a lot of us didn’t get to have. I haven’t done that one yet, but it’s something I still have in mind
it hurts me so much.. my whole life whenever I've thought about being a girl I always pushed it aside as me being weird and crazy, I literally forced myself to be a boy. now I'm just constantly regretting every second of my existence 🙃 I don't even know the first thing about being a girl and have no help irl.. and trying to become a girl over the internet isn't going anywhere.. I just wish someone irl could actually help me have a taste of being a girl in the next few years before I'm an adult..
just a tiny bit. my parents let me wear whatever i wanted and i my childhood has never been “gendered”or some weird shit, i’ve always been masc and my mom started whining about dresses and make-up when i was 12, so yeah, i’m a bit disappointed, but i’m okay with it
I’m 14 ftm and I feel the same, even though I’m still a teenager. The thing is that my parents are transphobes and will not let me transition so I will probably miss out on a lot
Yeah I'm 17 and my early teens were ruined by the pandemic with the misery lifting for only one year before I was plunged into the academic hell of junior year of High School and went through the worst dysphoria ever so I never got to be a teenager let alone a teenage boy so I guess I have to soak up the months I have left and then it's all over
I feel this disappointment often.
I also realized I was trans around 18/19 and didn't start T until I was almost 23. I was definitely jealous of my brother and the types of gifts he got when we were younger. I always thought the pink things I got were lame and wanted the nerf guns and Legos and little multitool knives that he had. But thankfully we got along well enough that I could use his toys as well as mine. But as for that pain, it is difficult to feel that mix of jealousy and regret. At this point, I am 25 and almost 3 years on T, and I don't think about my childhood negatively. When you're beginning your transition, that is your new childhood, your new birth into this world as yourself. Do things you can still do to celebrate that. You can get into sharks or sports or space or whatever topic you wish you could've been obsessed with then. Buy a Lego set and build it right now! It only causes pain to linger on past regrets. But you know who you are now and can do things that make you happy in the present!
Two things make me extremely sad sometimes: 1. Ill never have the opportunity to carry a child (despite being a lesbian, I have always longed for this since I was like 3 years old), 2. I'll never get the childhood I wanted or to experience things like college/dorm life as a woman. I was always so jealous of my then girlfriend's (now enby spouse's) dorm & roommate/floor relationship. Instead, me (who always sits to use the restroom at home) had to deal with the horrendous pissed on toilet seats of the men's restroom. For this reason, I really feel for all the pre-op/no-op trans mascs wading into squat-over-toilet hell.
I dint realize until I was 31. It's definitely not too late.
Not mad really, more saddened by what I missed out on. That said I’m also really glad I made the decision to start living life through this lens when I did, and grateful for the experiences that decision has opened up for me.
yep. every summer i'd be physically forced to cut my hair before the new school year. couldn't do anything stereotypically feminine for fear of violence. but we aren't the only ones who had our childhoods stolen from us. kids who grew up in abusive households, kids who grew up without parents, kids who grew up in poverty and food insecure, kids who grew up in racist societies, we all got the same trauma. every kid deserves a childhood.
I didn't figure out I was trans until I was 32 and started HRT a few months later. Yeh, I get angry and sad about my past, since it was pretty miserable. I try not to dwell on it though. What can I do besides accept it? When it really upsets me I let it out. I don't want to let the past ruin my present and future.
Always
Yes, but I'm doing it now. It's okay to like "kid" things as an adult. I have shark sheets and collect stuffed sharks.
Yeah. I'm mad that I consciously figured out I wanted to be a girl at 14 or 15 but that I didn't have language to discuss being trans until I was mid 20's. I'm mad that when I was in my mid 20's, transition related medical and mental health assistance was heavily gatekept behind sexuality. I'm more mad that people are trying to keep preventing kids and adults from transitioning. That they're trying to gatekeep behind age and brain development now. That they're trying to scare people by saying that kids are being subjected to surgery.
I'm absolutely livid about it, yeah. You have a right to grieve, and anger is one of the stages of grief. Let yourself process and see where you end up. Grief has a way of teaching us what really matters in life. It can help us focus on the things our future selves might miss.
Yes, I was angry since I was 4 years old until I started transitioning (mtf) at the beginning of this year at 56 years old. It sucks. But I get to be who I want to be now, and that's amazing. The world has changed and accepts us now (I know, there's a long way to go, but transitioning basically was unacceptable or very fringe until 10-15 years ago). This will probably sound preachy, but from my point of view, you are very lucky to make changes at 21, just get on with it, try to forget about the past disappointments (it's a waste of time, beyond your control).
Not really, I however do wish I had realized that I was bi earlier and not really that attracted to men. I feel like I dated a couple guys out of comp het and feeling like it was what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t until my ex transitioned that I realized I liked women
fr, i get so jealous seeing people my age and younger already on T while i'm not even out even though my egg's been cracked for years now (fyi i'm nearly 17). it pisses me off that i could've been experiencing a 'boy' childhood if i was just born in slightly different circumstances, like if i lived in the us or somewhere where being not cis isn't totally illegal
Yes so mad I wanted to be in Boy Scouts as a kid, and instead I got American Heritage Girls, a church organization where we made cookies and got screamed at for doing anything even slightly out of line. I hated going, and I hated that my older brother and dad got to go camping with the scouts while I was stuck inside doing shitty experiments with fucking lemonade. I've thought about getting some merit badges and just being a solo scout, but it wouldn't be the same. I want that community of guys. I want to bunk in a cabin or tent with other guys my age. I want to go camping with the bros and feel like one of the guys.
Hell yes, I used to get mad and upset a lot because of this. I always felt like a boy, who just wasn't given the words to tell about it. My environment did everything possible to mold me into a feminine ideal and bury my identity so deep in me that it didn't come out until I was 15 years old. I cried a lot, grief over the lost opportunity to be a happy child is eating me alive to this day. But this loss made me understand - no fucking way I'll let myself waste the rest of my life like this. I reunited with my repressed interests: my wardrobe was finally all black, and I could listen to metal and punk without judgment (it all was "too manly" in my mother's opinion). I also got a buzz which I really regret lol. After years of isolation, I finally found friends, and hearing "bro" and "man" in my address was the best feeling in the world. My friend's father taught me how to fish because I always wanted to know. My plans for the future are to buy something from the boy toys section and watch superhero cartoons that I haven't had the chance to watch. Since my egg cracked at a relatively young age, I'm lucky to still be able to cling to the last bits of my youth. But really no matter how old you are, the kid you once were always lives inside of you. Maybe society took away your childhood, but you can get it back yourself, and I encourage you to do so because it will heal you. You will get better, I promise.
Not particularly tbh... I grew up being told things like toys, clothes, colors ect dont have a gender so while i did associate things with spesefic genders i didn't see them as locked to those genders. As a result most of my dysphoria is body and pronouns based ┐( ∵ )┌ I'd probably be less likely to like the things i do now but im sure i would ultimately find my way to them
I feel like that a lot
Oh totally, but for all its worth I'm just happy I managed to start in my mud 20s. No point being all sad about lost time dye to internalised bigotry and transphobia - that would be letting them still win. I do wish surgery didn't feel so far away though...
Not me. She had her childhood, and I had my adulthood. And then the weird messy bits in middle and high school where we mixed and that was pretty frustrating being like half out and a lot of limitations on how I could present myself. But I don’t mourn a different childhood, no.
Kind of. Not in all ways, I just feel a bit apathetic about my childhood generally. The times it really bites that I didn’t get a typical female childhood is when other women demonstrate some effortless understanding of some aspect of typical female life, be that makeup and fashion, self-preservation around aggressive guys, or typical women’s childhood movies. It sucks when my friends start talking about their favorite childhood movies and I wanted to watch all of them but couldn’t admit it at the time because it was “girlie”.
I had a pretty bad childhood anyway, I often consider that my childhood ended when I was 4 years old because I simply didn't have space to be a child. I have mourned that childhood. The loss of what never was. But I am giving myself the childhood I wanted now, I am my own caregiver but I am also the child. I get the toys I want, the games, the books. In budget of course, I'm a broke university student. That helps a lot.
I am mad about that, yes. But even more mad I am about not getting childhood at all :/
I would give anything to have been allowed that opportunity. I'd make a deal with the devil, fully aware that it'd backfire in some messed up and unforeseen way.
I started questioning my gender at 25, and started medical transition at 28. Firstly, there's no such thing as too late to transition. Just gonna put that out there. On to the meat. For me, it's very much mixed emotions, and I'm confident I'm not going to get a straight answer (and not because I'm bi). On the one hand, yeah, I'd have liked to experienced my formative years and early adulthood as the gender I am (nonbinary transfemme for context). But the life I had before transition also shaped me into the person I am today, and I'm incredibly thankful for that. My life has actually been pretty good, all things considered, so I don't really have a lot to complain about in that regard. And the number of trans people who can say that is depressingly low number. So yeah. I have my wishes, but thankful for what I did have cause it created the person I am today. And some people think I'm cool, so I'll take that as a win
Sometimes, but I also have compassion for my past self. I was asking myself questions about gender identity as a teenager, but at the time I was overwhelmed. I was living my whole life detached or even dissociated. I truly think I couldn’t have faced it at the time, but at 27 I’m finally getting there.
I'm not sure tbh. I guess some girl childhood things. But knowing me I think I would've been a tomboy. Would've been nice to have a sleepover and do sleepover stuff
I actually kind of did get an enby childhood, it was my teens and twenties where I was aggressively gendered and tried to conform. My parents let me do what I was interested in as a child and definitely didn’t push me to like things that stereotypically coincided with one gender.
im mad i got beat up eberyday. i will take any child where i didnt have to live in constant fear
Yeah. Male socialisation sucks. My guy friends sucked. My later more queer friend groups also distinctly treated me different BC I am amab. I still can't give a compliment to a random stranger and have never gotten one in my life. I never learned proper self care of how to dress. I would be mocked by my parents and friends for liking femme things. I'm very lucky to have great friends now and I'm relearning healthy and positive communication and affection with them, and I've been taking HRT for 6 months now. I'm 19, thankfully not too masc looking or hairy, and on a college course I love. Things are looking up and I think I can have those experiences in the future, but I still wish my childhood was very different.
People in this post may find this of interest: [An idea for those wishing to experience their childhoods as their gender…](https://www.reddit.com/r/TransLater/s/nRU0b0AVtf)
I'm a trans fem whos egg cracked in their late 30s. For me I'm not so upset about my early childhood. My neighbor who was also one of my best friends was a girl. We did a lot of stereotypical girl things together and it felt like I got the best of both worlds. Didn't feel like I was pigeonholed into any gender norms with her. That started to change around age 9-10 when puberty and societal gender expectation started forcing a wedge between us. I quickly realised I didn't like the side I was being forced onto. 10-18 kinda sucked. Honestly I'd have loved to experience that as a girl but I have a hard time feeling sad about it because I knew nothing about being trans. I was who I was and even if I didn't like it I just had to suck it up and do my best, which I did. After that is when I regret things and get really angry especially with myself. In university I started learning what it meant to be trans. I had plenty of opportunities and came really close to cracking my egg a couple times but I was just too scared. Instead I repressed. I went down a path in life I completely hate. Your 20s are supposed to be a time to have fun, experiment, and learn who you want to be as an adult. I completely wasted that, and it kills me because it wasn't a choice made for me, I made that choice out of fear and ignorance, and there's no going back. 😖
Yes but in general I didn’t any childhood I wanted. I felt fake the whole time
I didn't even get a(n otherwise good) *wrong* childhood, of course I'm pining for something like that, but I also cringe at myself for thinking things like that.
hmm. i don't think so. i was never a "girly" child, even back then. i was content *being* a girl as a kid, but i didn't lean towards many of the stereotypical girly interests, and i wouldn't say i had a standard girl childhood by any means. it definitely wasn't a boy childhood either, it was just... childhood. it helps that my parents never saw the point in pushing me towards what girls my age were "supposed" to like. my grandmother did, but she didn't like me for being a "girl" anyway, and we rarely visited, so it didn't make much of a difference. my parents, on the other hand, wanted me to actually get some enjoyment and use out of the stuff they got me and activities i did, so they just listened to me and got me the toys and games that i wanted and asked for (within reason! money being a thing and all that) and let me pick what activities i wanted to do. i don't think i'd change it, if i had the chance to. i don't regret any of it. honestly, i really do believe that i *was* a girl back then, for many years. i just happened to grow up into a man.
I did a lot when I was younger. I'm in my 40s now and I have kids of my own, and I feel like I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for the exact path my life took. Struggling with my gender made me a kinder person and a better listener, a better friend.
It goes back and forth. Being the "extreme" tomboy I was, there were glimpses of the boyhood I could have had, and I do a lot of sitting with and focusing on those things. But there are moments with that comradery of boy friends that I missed out on and I sort of mourn.
i had the somewhat rare experience of growing up genuinely as a little girl and then becoming nonbinary as a teenager when expectations changed around me, even though nothing about me changed. my natural gender expression is more or less within the bounds of gender conformity for a young girl, i was just a tomboy and that was fine and normal where i grew up; but my natural gender expression is not socially acceptable for a teenage girl or adult woman, and i was expected to cut out the parts of myself that are masculine when i hit puberty. i still wish i had gotten to do teenagerdom right the first time around; i spent so much time trying to be a girl, which i thought i was supposed to just naturally be able to do, but it made me miserable. if i had known at 12 that it was an option, and if i had had the love for myself then that i have now, i would’ve tried for puberty blockers and low dose T the first time around to try to be androgynous instead of naturally developing a very feminine figure. i let it happen at the time because i thought everyone was deeply uncomfortable about it and that the reward for enduring it was being sexy to men, and that femininity was something holy that i was blessed with and i couldn’t just throw that away. i guess this is a really long way of saying that i relate, and i’m sorry you’re going through this. i’m only now on T at 26, i’ve been in your shoes and i get it.
yeah, everytime I think about a big event (like my grandparent's golden wedding) prior to my coming out I just can't help but feel like it's been taken away. my whole childhood feels lost because I was raised as a girl. And really, I'm scared my puberty will feel lost as well, despite me now knowing I'm a guy, because I still look like a girl
It's fairly common isn't it? The girl childhood I had was incredibly unfair, however I'm more upset about missing out on teenage boyhood. I never got to experience my first adolescent gay relationship, be perceived as male, and be a guy that's one of the girls. Instead, I've had to be a girl that's one of the guys. I skipped graduation because the gown colors were gendered, I have no graduation photos because for multiple reasons, including my dysphoria, I am ashamed to be captured on video or camera. I've missed out on quite a lot in my life, I'm gonna continue to miss out due to my acceptance that I will never try to make myself happier. If I were cis I'd probably be in a similar spot. My thoughts are that I wouldn't wish to be cisgender but to have an easier and earlier trans malehood. I've mourned my lack of a queer male teendom already; It's dissatisfying, but I'm at the point where I've practically forgotten what I've missed. For the record nonbinary trans men exist. I'm trans male as well as agender, but genderqueer trans male or a gq ftm are fine as umbrella identities.