how I realized I'm trans

first of all this is MY experience, and it's totally valid to have a different one

I wouldn't say I was masculine or wanted to be a boy as a kid. I was androgynous I think, and I was okay with being a girl. I don't have a lot of memories related to those topics tbh, I was just a kid worried of being a kid.

I think the dysphoria started at 11 years, with puberty and when everyone started to grow up. I was uncomfortable with all those changes in my body, and I didn't related to the other girls. yeah, I was that "I'm not like the other girls" type of girl. I remember looking at the boys of my class with envy when their voices started to change and suddenly be tall. also I would search for anything masculine in me to feel better about myself.

I didn't know what was happening to me at that time, so I thought firstly that it was just puberty. then I watched a video of a trans man for the first time. I got obsessed and watched a lot of more videos, but even if I had like a "weird interest" I didn't feel totally identified bc at that time all these trans men youtubers were like, hyper-masculine and muscular, and shit I was just a kid with "masculine and feminine interests" so obviously I wouldn't identify with that. So I leaved the idea, bc I thought I wasn't masculine enough and also bc of fear.

so time passed, the idea never got out of my head really, and the dysphoria just would go worse. sometimes I would wish to wake up being a man, I would treat myself with he/him pronouns in my head or in fucking amino (god). I remember saying to a friend that I would rather be a man and she replied that she too, so I thought it was normal to feel like this as a girl. then I would go back to these trans men videos time to time, I would think "god I wish I was trans", but fear and negation would make me just run away from the idea. then negation got so strong that I thought "it must be interiorized misoginy" and tried to dress more girly and "try to get used to be a woman" because "there's nothing I can do".

that was a hard time in my life because of that forcing on myself to just be a woman made me start experiencing dissociation and despersonalization lol. so well, I kept like that until some months into the pandemic, were being so much time alone with my thoughts just made me broke up and explode. I realized I didn't really saw me in the future as a woman, and that I would rather be dead. I think that realization made me finally accept that something was wrong. and navigating on the internet I discovered the term non binary. even if I don't consider myself non binary anymore, I think it was very important to accept myself as trans, because it was very hard for me, bc of shame and some ideas I had back then, to accept that I could be a man; that label made me able to experiment with myself and what really makes me comfortable in a more open way and away from gender roles and binary.

so time passed, and to be honest I was very confused with what I was and anxiety would make me constantly think "what if I'm not trans" and shit. but then when I joined some communities I realized three fundamental things that would make me feel more valid: a cis person doesn't feel like they have to get used to their gender, having an imposter syndrome as a trans person is the most normal thing in the world, and not every trans person has to know they are trans since they are little. also this page made me realize that I really had gender dysphoria and made me feel a lot more valid of what I was feeling

with time I started to get a more and more masculine identity, until some day I just said, ok, I think I'm just a man. and it just stayed like that until today. then, with a lot of fear, I started to tell others to treat me as a man, and tho it felt weird at first, with time yeah, it just felt better than the other way.

and that's my experience, in short.