It’s been a bit over two years since I first came out as transgender. I remember the first time I told someone: an old friend was giving me a ride on post, and I tentatively told him that I was trans. The first time, it felt like a combination of climbing up an unknown path and jumping down into the water of indeterminate temperature. It went alright, and I felt a huge weight off of my shoulders because someone else finally knew my secret and I knew that telling other people (except for family) would be easier after that.

I also remember coming to the conclusion that I was trans in the first place. I spent a lot of time in my head—definitely too much—and thought more and more about how wrong my body was. The idea of a sex change sounded very promising, albeit way too expensive for me to afford at the time. It was a dream of mine to be a passable, real man with all of the right parts and everything.

In hopes of passing, I started to dress in a more masculine way. (I even recall tearing all of the clothes I found to be too feminine out of my wardrobe . . . One could say I “came out of the closet” holding a bunch of girls’ clothes and fuming with anger at my life and body.) Using ace bandages, I began binding, which was an unhealthy move of desperation on my part. Eventually, I moved to real binders as I got more and more boys’ clothes to wear.

As I told my friends and acquaintances about me being transgender, I was majoritively met with support. Most people went out of their way to use my correct name and pronouns. I was patient with people who genuinely slipped up and weren’t trying to disrespect me on purpose. My old name and pronouns sounded at best foreign to me and at worst brought up feelings of helplessness and rage at my current situation.

Despite all of my suffering, my mother refused to allow me to even begin to transition. I would beg her, crying my eyes out, to allow me to just buy myself some hormones (which you need a parent’s consent to do as a minor). I felt that she was being cruel by preventing me from doing this.

Over time, my dysphoria increased to the point that it was unbearable. It would keep me up for hours on end and sapped much of my mental energy. I told my mother in the car driving home from a field trip that I didn’t want to be trans anymore, which she was quite happy about. She even had a therapist in mind that she thought would help me work through the dysphoria and not feel trans anymore. (When we actually saw the therapist, she claimed that that wasn’t what she did, but that’s beside the point.)

I discovered a site called www.thirdwaytrans.com, which gave a lot of information on gender dysphoria and the lived experiences of a former trans woman. My mind was open to his perspective on that mental illness. He believes that much more can be done to help trans people work through their feelings without requiring (monetarily and emotionally) costly transition. One mentality which he advocates for is for transgender-identifying people to view themselves as people with gender dysphoria rather than as trans people, which leads to more options for their future. I used this strategy to privately start seeing if I could be comfortable enough as a girl to go back to living as one. The most helpful thing that the blog inspired me to do was to identify what triggered my dysphoria and use that to avoid bringing about those negative feelings. This was immensely helpful to me.

Writing this was very important to me because I wanted to inspire anyone struggling with transgender feelings to try going down a similar path. It’s so easy to get stuck in the cycle of dysphoric thoughts and the resulting depression, and I am aware of how that feels. I know that identifying triggers and avoiding them may not work for everyone, but I think that it’s worth a shot when the transition is so objectively taxing on the mind, body, and wallet.

Feel free to contact me at benditlikebubka@gmail.com if you have any questions or would like my perspective. Please note, though, that I am not a medical professional and my advice is that of one layman to another. I can only use my own research, knowledge, and experiences.