I realised that I'm not really cis.

I've regularly gone through phases of wanting to be a man since I was 13 or so. Funnily enough, I have a few posts from back in 2011 and 2012 talking about it. I always thought I was just a weird girl who wanted to be a boy, but in the last few months, I realised that apparently these are thoughts trans men think about often before they transition.

I still don't know what I am. I'm totally lost and confused. I still see myself as a woman who wants to be a man, instead of a man stuck in a woman's body.

It's almost surreal reading back at my old posts talking about how much I want to be a boy and how things, even the most mundane, would be better. It seems like all the signs were there and I somehow missed them all.

I'm now 26, engaged and own a house on mortgage. I've set the foundations for my typical, straight cis girl life. Yet, I've always just felt unhappy with how I am. Recently I've been more sad than usual because of relationship issues - it's been going on for years. The gender dysphoria seems to be getting worse. Am I sad because I want to be a man so badly, or do I want to be a man so badly because I am sad? I wish I knew, then perhaps making a life-changing decision would be easier.

I realised what my feelings of wanting to be a man truly were around May 2022, just before my 26th birthday. It's odd - I've always had this feeling that I'd never live past 25. I just couldn't see myself beyond the age of 25. But here I am, still breathing, at age 26. Maybe I just never saw myself living as a woman past 25.

Occasionally when I talk, I slip and say things like "When I'm an old man" or "I'm doing x like an old man". Somehow the words came so naturally out of me long before I realised I have gender dysphoria. I thought I was just being scatterbrained, but now I'm wondering if a subconscious part of me was expecting to grow old as a man.

I'm so tired of living these days. I've gone through so much already in my teen years. I'm ready to rest. Yet, when I imagine myself as a man, the little things in life seem so much more joyful. Hanging out with friends as a man. Riding a bus as a man. Walking to the supermarket as a man. Why do these things seem to make life sound magical again?

I'm too scared to medically transition. I'm scared of throwing away the life I have built around my current identity. I'm scared that even if I did transition, I would never become the kind of man I want to be. I want to be logical. I want to be confident. I want to be intelligent. I want to be assertive. I want to have leadership qualities.

I don't want my silly, crippling phobias; how prone I am to letting people treat me like dirt; how scared I get when someone confronts me; how emotional I get; how easily I cry. I'm only 5'3". I know it's toxic masculinity but I feel like I can get away with these things as a woman. I'm so damn weak, and it's socially acceptable to be that way as a woman.

I wish I could be a strong man.

My best friend stopped talking to me.

I actually posted this on Reddit for advice back in December 2020. I got one piece of advice that set my mind more at peace. Sadly my post disappeared for some reason when I was looking for it today, but I had saved a draft here and thought I'd post it for record purposes.

 

-

 

My friend and I have been close for around 7-8 years. Around 6 months ago, her boyfriend of 6-7 years broke up with her and obviously this hit her hard. Her other friends and I have been trying to comfort her and listen to her talk about struggling over the breakup and also her financial issues. She seemed to be doing better after the 1-2 months, then her financial issues cropped up again, triggered extreme stress in her and she basically had a breakdown. This brought back all her negative feelings about the breakup as well as an existential crisis. I think she was feeling angry about life in general and unintentionally lashed out at me when I was trying to comfort her. We talked it out after she calmed down, but I've still continued to worry about whether my words would just upset her rather than help her.

 

I've been suggesting that she should speak with a therapist about her feelings, which she finally agreed to do after she realised she has been putting a lot of emotional pressure on me and her other friends. It's now been 3 months since she started seeing a therapist. I feel like she's not been the same since the breakdown and we don't talk as much as we used to anymore. We used to talk almost everyday, whereas now it's weeks before we speak. The recent conversations are always initiated by myself. She used to initiate conversations more often purely because of our different personalities - she's more open and talkative while I'm more the type to keep to myself.

 

Now here's a little background on me. I won't delve too much into it but I've had a fairly rough past - I suffered through abusive parents, then came out of that environment straight to an abusive ex-boyfriend for a year. The friend I mentioned actually helped me a lot with just being present as someone I could talk to when I was dealing with the breakup. The first few weeks were rough, then I started university and felt like I could fully move on now that there was something to focus on. I had a difficult time in university as I had the misfortune of meeting girls who seemed to hate me for some reason and would talk down to me, plus I had to continue to put up with my parents' abuse. I had several breakdowns during these few years and have spoken with therapists.

 

Hopefully that gives a good idea of my emotional stability. I've struggled with depressive bouts and suicidal thoughts for about half of my life. It's finally starting to get a little bit better now, however I still frequently second-guess myself, irrationally feel like everyone hates me and am prone to feeling sad and angry whenever I think about the things I went through.

 

Back to my friend's situation. When we last spoke, she admitted that she's still not doing great and still struggling with the breakup. Neither of us have addressed that we're not talking as much anymore (she's still in regular contact with her all other friends from what I heard). This would easily be fixed by me making more of an effort to initiate conversations, but I'm finding it hard to find the motivation to do it. Our conversations end up going back to her feelings on her breakup and I feel like I don't know how to respond anymore. I don't know what I can say to make her feel better. I don't know what else to say to support her. I'm just starting to feel tired because I already struggle a lot with my own emotional problems and feel like I don't have the capacity to support another person. I just want to be left alone and at peace for a while.

 

I also feel like she doesn't really ask me specifics on how I am/how I'm doing as much anymore - for example, I ask questions like "how is x going at work", "how's the new x", etc. Our friendship is just starting to feel one-sided now that I'm initiating the conversations and the conversations are mainly centered around her.

 

I feel like I'm a bad friend. Maybe I should be putting side my own mental health to support her. Maybe I'm being selfish for wanting to talk about myself too in our conversations. Maybe I'm a horrible person for having these thoughts when she's the one actually going through a hard time and in need of support, since there's nothing actively causing me grief in my life currently.

 

I guess I'd like people's thoughts on whether I'm a bad person for not continuing to actively reach out to support her, or for people to basically give me permission that it's okay to focus on myself for a while so I can come to terms with all my feelings of guilt. I feel awful for not being able to help her through her breakup when she had helped me through mine. I just feel so tired.

 

-

 

The advice that helped me was that maybe she could tell her unloading her emotions onto me was too much and so she's withdrawing in order to not ruin our friendship completely. The Redditor also said there's a difference between temporarily supporting someone during their time of need and permanently supporting someone who can't move on.

I wish I had saved their post because they put it far more articulately than I did.

It's now been almost a full year since my best friend stopped talking to me much. We caught up a little bit now and then, but it didn't feel the same.

 

My fiance actually talked to her without me knowing and asked her to get in touch with me again. She did send a lengthy message, apologising for withdrawing and saying that it was because of our time difference (she lives in the US). Time difference had never stopped us before though, so honestly I still feel like it was an excuse. I think she just kind of stopped enjoying my company.

 

She asked me how I was though and if I've been doing anything new. She seemed like she was interested. It felt like how we used to talk again.

 

Then my fiance told me he had actually reached out to her first, which made me doubt whether she actually wanted to talk to me, or if she just felt pressured to.

 

I reached out to her a couple weeks later and she was just back to talking about herself again. I tried to bring up a few things I've been doing recently, but she doesn't respond to these and just carries on talking about her problems. This was what made me start withdrawing in the first place.

 

I don't think I can call her my best friend anymore. I'm quite certain she doesn't see me that way anymore. I guess sometimes friendships just fade and I have to learn to be okay with that.

It's been five years.

Somehow it's been five years since my last entry. I haven't totally forgotten about this blog of mine - I just haven't felt the need to express my thoughts somewhere private. A lot of things have happened. I got engaged to my partner (the one I met in university) as of November 2019. I've been freelance modelling for four years. I've graduated from uni and now have a stable job. I bought a house with my fiancé in August 2020. Things are good.

Honestly, I revisited this blog today because I was feeling down about life in general for some reason. I think I still have some sort of trauma from everything I experienced in my adolescence (most of which have been recorded here). Sometimes I just feel like things aren't "right" in my life and that I still haven't achieved happiness. This morning, I planned to go on this blog and write an entry about these depressive bouts I go through sometimes, and all the things currently going wrong in my life.

I got curious about previous entries I've written and ended up down the rabbit hole of reading a good chunk of my past entries, starting in 2011 to 2013. This was a time when I was struggling a lot with family issues and my abusive dad. Then mid-2013 to 2014, I struggled with an abusive boyfriend. I stopped reading at the mid-2013 point because that next period of my life was exhausting and there are a lot of things I regretted or wish I could have done differently in hindsight.

Anyway, reading all those past entries was eye-opening for me. My life really is significantly better now. I was shocked by the utter misery and hopelessness I must have felt in my younger years. I used to absolutely hate my appearance, which I don't remember having felt so strongly about it. Somehow I've forgotten about how bad things used to be.

I talked about my goals of "getting good grades", "getting a stable job" and "finding someone who loves me". I've achieved all of these now. In my most recent entry, I talked about wanting a freelance part-time job and I've achieved this too with modelling.

My life has done a 180 and I probably couldn't have ever dreamt of having my current life back when I was 15 years old. My mind is still plagued sometimes by all the struggles and abuse I went through, but looking back, my life has undoubtedly improved. It wasn't a lie when people say things get better. They really do. I just need to remind myself of this.

Things are good. :)

I'm alive!

The summer holidays flew by and now I'm going back to university this Sunday. I'll be living in dorms again. I'm not looking forward to the food and the amount of socialising required, but I'm hoping to make new (lasting) friends this time round. Last year I only had Chinese international/exchange students as my friends. They're all leaving the country eventually and they don't have Facebook so it makes it awkward to keep in contact. My Mandarin isn't too great either so it's difficult to keep up in conversations.

I haven't been up to much otherwise. I went on a trip to Pretzfeld, Germany with my boyfriend and his family, which was nice. I tried to look for some freelance jobs I could do on Fiverr but didn't have much luck. I also started up a T-shirt store but again, no luck with sales. It doesn't seem like there's any convenient jobs that I can take on other than proper part-time jobs, which would be risky to juggle during an architecture course. I looked into other freelancing sites but they just weren't very user friendly and appeared to be aimed at full-time freelancers rather than students without any experience.

I've been looking at copy-typing jobs since that appears to be the only thing I'm really good at. I did a quick online test and had a typing speed of 100 wpm. Not as fast as I used to be (130 wpm) but it's still a lot faster than the average person. All other jobs ask for qualifications of some sort.

So I guess I just need to be patient. I can't wait to graduate and begin job-hunting. I just want to do something productive. Anything. I feel restless.

I did do one sort-of productive thing during the summer though. I've learnt to recognise all hiragana characters. I've still yet to tackle katakana though.

...Literally just got distracted and started learning katakana, so I'll be cutting this entry short.

Get over it.

So apparently my ex has been writing a LOT of stuff about me on forums. Mostly negative comments. Jesus fuck, leave me alone. It's been almost a year since we broke up so I don't know why he's still talking about me and obsessing over me. Get the fuck over it. :/

It's making me extremely uncomfortable. He's disgusting and pathetic.

Just wanted to rage somewhere.