Here's where I document my journey as a transgender man.
Memories of early childhood where I would start developing my ideas of my gender are blurry, but my mom did say I never got along well with girl groups. I have many memories of not liking toys marketed to girls, how ecstatic I was to get a dinosaur toy as a christmas present, always wanting to hang out with my brothers' friends, always wanting to do what my brother was doing, etc. I guess I kind of 'lived as a boy' through my brother. If I had an older sister instead, I have no idea what I would do. I still have that dinosaur toy, it doesn't work anymore, but it's fuckin' awesome. Just so you know.
My proper introduction to the queer community was through the Hazbin Hotel fandom. I saw words like lesbian, gay, trans, and stuff before that, but never really comprehended what they meant. I found out the definition of 'aroace' from Alastor fanart, and it was just like, "Wow! That's me!" And ever since then I hung out in queer spaces online. I went by the genderfluid label in about 2020, but started getting more dysphoric and really realized what it meant to be trans in 2021. I tried changing my name to Apriori despite openly transphobic classmates and stuff but still went with it (because fuck transphobes).
I cut my hair short in Sept. 2022 and haven't turned back to ass-length hair since. At some point I came out to my family as trans by just shouting it down the stairs as I walked up them during dinner time (in my defense I was delirious from a fever). I actually 'stole' that coming-out method via someone at my highschool's GSA. Since then they've gotten used to me buying men's clothes and they got a binder for me. My highschool is trans accepting and I have other trans friends there, and I get to be out and proud which is a very welcome change from Grade 9.
Sometime from late May to early June this year is when I realized I was a system / I had DID. It was...shocking, and distressing, and worrying, and chaotic, and a whole bunch of other negative adjectives I can't find the actual word to right now. Me realizing I was a system was basically like, our co-host Deluna - who split at the start of the school year / september 2022 - realizing she could take control of the body fully, and introducing herself to our friends. We had two system friends in the group, so the next day they told me that I had DID. And when I told the experience to my psychiatrist and therapist at a specialized psychosis clinic, they agreed that it was dissociative identities rather than psychosis.
So the system journey has been kind of weird. We've integrated a lot since then but discovery of the system and integration during 2023 really changed the way I viewed my gender. I realized I wasn't genderfluid in the sense that singlets are. Me, as the host, am individually a bigender man + woman, but eventually we realized that bodily, we're a trans man. Like, all of my cohosts are incredibly hyperfeminine presenting and identifying, to the point where one of them goes by 'pink' as a neopronoun and one of them refuses to be seen in anything that's not pink or lavender in headspace. But both of them feel dysphoria when in the body we use the women's bathroom, get called she/her, are seen in dresses, etc. When in the body they get the same feeling I do when around hypermasculine men that "I'm seen as a separate category than these guys." So we started identifying as collectively/bodily a trans man that goes by he/him. It's just for people who know us as individual alters that refer to us or think of us in any other way.
Pretty good timing to update this section of my site, right? Completely unintended, I swear. Anyway. I'm 17 now! Time is starting to move faster and I don't like that. But this is a transgender journal, not an aging journal. Basically my 'incessantly trying to get HRT legally' journey has gone as such:
» Mid age 16: GP refuses to refer me to gender clinic because I am too young and mentally unstable (this was mid psychotic break)
» Ask psychiatrist to refer me instead, refuses because 'that's something your GP needs to do', tell him what GP said, he tells me to wait until 17
» Get new psychiatrist who actually refers to me by my preferred name and pronouns, ask her right before I turn 17
» Learn that the youth gender clinic has a minimum waitlist of 2 years so I'll be too old by the time I get a referall and am forced to wait another year
So yeah it's been pretty frustrating lmao. Either way I WILL get on hormones, I'm not going to let anything stop me. I only worry that testosterone will trigger my psychosis to worsen, but that's not that big of a problem because then I'll just up my antipsychotics dose if it's that bad. I still can't decide what style of facial hair I want to grow out, but I guess it's better to wait and see what I'm going to be working with, right!?
On the topic of hair, I really hope I inherited my dad's (and his dad's) genes, because my hair is REALLY important to me and I don't want male patterned baldness! Nor do I want it to gray out any time soon... (Dad's 50 and his hair's still black, so.) I've also finally made up my mind and started growing out Lain's haircut! I'm going to keep the rest of my hair more masculine than hers, but I'm gonna fully grow out the elongated bang on the right side just like how she has it. Two of our alters have Lain's hairstyle internally, so they're very happy at this decision, lol. Awhile ago I fashioned two hairbands into being like Lain's hairclip, but I think I'm going to make a better one.
Anyway, I've been tucking the bang behind my ear as it grows out because it looks kind of stupid this short, but going by how fast my hair grows I think it'll be fully grown out by September. Very exciting...
My lain hair has finally grown out and it's so hard keeping it to the side. I had shortshort hair so long I forgot how naturally curly my hair is!!! Either way, I finally socially transitioned into using Nexus everywhere. I'm not ready for adulthood but I AM ready to get on HRT already!! Less than half a year away...(until I get put on a waiting list, that is)