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When I first transitioned, I was afraid I might be going too fast, getting over-eager and letting excitement get the best of me. When I told family they expressed shock. "You just never struck me as having any problems!"
But as I learn more about myself, I realize that I& #39;m not just happier now, but that there actually WERE a lot of signs growing up. I think most people just don& #39;t know what they look like. (least of all me, at the time)
For as long as I can remember, I strongly preferred to wear a shirt anytime I went to a beach or pool, in addition to swimming trunks. I could have never told you precisely why, it wasn& #39;t for body image reasons, I did it even pre-puberty. I just preferred to cover my chest.
When gender came up in video games, I got touchy. When I was 8, every time I noticed my cousin playing as a girl in a game, I would focus on it and sort of mock him for it. Girl avatars felt weird, scary, and wrong. Until I let myself explore them in high school!
That behavior might be common, but I think I primarily did it because of feelings I didn& #39;t know how to deal with. At a pretty young age, I learned to squash those feelings down as much as I could, for fear of being weird. Me mocking my cousin was like a defense mechanism
One of my strongest memories from those years is watching a movie where a man and woman switched bodies briefly, and I started daydreaming about if I had boobs, before quickly deciding that was a gross and perverted thought and forcefully threw it away.
The memory stuck though, hard. Most media I watched that tried to really break down differences between gender stuck with me. Memes about the differences between men and women, body swap tv episodes, I thought about all of that stuff A LOT.
I never really had a sense of any sort of aesthetic growing up. My room was always devoid of any form of decoration, barring stuff placed there by my mom like pictures. Even though I had interests, those interests never manifested in desiring any physical thing
I never wanted posters, or stickers, or clothing. Even when I was given that stuff, I treated it like trash, or actively avoided using it. I never once desired a piece of clothing in my life, outside of stuff that was "comfortable".
But of course what was comfortable was baggy sweatpants, large hoodies, anything with a stretchy waistband. I actively HATED jeans, refusing to wear them them until high school, at which point I had reached max apathy about my appearance.
I let acne destroy my face, I showered as little as possible, wore clothes big and baggy enough to HIDE in anytime I felt uncomfortable. I grew a beard, not because I wanted one, but because not having one was harder and I just didn& #39;t care.
I might add more to this thread as I think about it. Dysphoria has had such a crazy and far reaching impact on my life, and I& #39;m still unpacking exactly how its affected me.
