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09/15/24 |
        
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This is something I can't help thinking about every once in a while. How
would my life be different if I had known I was trans at a younger age?
Would it have been better, or worse? What if I had known as a kid? Or a teen? It certainly wouldn't be all rainbows and sunshine. I grew up in a conservative Christian household. They wouldn't have let me start HRT. If I had dared come out to them, they likely would have sent me to conversion therapy or something. What if I had known as an adult? I was living with my parents until just before age 21 or so. I don't think I could have hid it from them for that long, and: What if I had known when I moved out? I moved to a small town in a red state, the sort of place gay people simply don't exist. I maybe could have started HRT anyways, but that stuff gets hard to hide, and I stayed there for 6 years. It would have been suffocating to know myself and still hide all that time. I acknowledged it at the end of my time there, and I started HRT, and maybe that was for the best, because I didn't have to wait long to start, and I didn't stay long enough that I couldn't stay in the closet. But... what if? What if when I started puberty, when my body started twisting and deforming, when my voice dropped, when I started feeling greasy, smelly, miserable... what if I had a name for my suffering back then? Would that have been better? Would knowing what I wanted, what I needed, but being unable to have it, would that have been worth it? Would it have granted me hope? Would the clarity have made things easier? Harder? Would it have all evened out? Could I have started sooner? Would I have avoided some of the body hair I still have? Would I not have such broad shoulders? Would my body be more in line with what I want? Changes were definitely still happening in my early 20s. Even starting at 18 would have been very different, I feel. Would all the new pains I'd have felt been worth it to have the chance to present as myself when I was younger, to take steps towards figuring myself out, like I'm still struggling to do today? Do I even want that? Wouldn't that kill the me that I am? Am I not a product of my environment and experiences, good and bad? Would I be better for it? Or might I be worse, not having lived the experience? I don't know, and I'll never know. I still can't help myself from wondering though. |
This site was last updated 04/19/23