my experience with being transgender

if you don't know me im Jonas and i am transgender. basically what that means to me is i was assigned female at birth and have since transitioned to now identify as a demiboy. i use the label demiboy because i relate to both feelings of non-binary/a lack of gender and a masculine feeling gender. i am transmasc. ive only been identifying as trans for about 3 months so it's very early days. i wanted to share my experience of how i found my identity and hope to help anybody who may be questioning their gender and want to know how it feels to be trans. keep in mind this is just my personal experience and there's no certain rules to being transgender it's all your own individual journey <3

all of my life i grew up as a girl. i can remember though distinct feelings i had as a child about what it would be like if i was a boy. i used to pretend i was a boy in my head that was pretending to be a girl because everyone else saw me as a girl. i used to ask my friends if they would still like me if i was a boy, i used to try lucid dream in order to feel like a boy in my dreams, i'd ask my friends who were boys what it felt like to be a boy and a lot more very obvious signs that in my head i wasn't feeling like a girl. but i thought everybody felt like this. everyone dreamed and pondered being the other gender. this wasn't the case. i found this out one day when i asked my best friend at the time (who's a girl) if she would be happy if one day she just woke up a boy and she said "not at all. i don't want to be a boy i like being a girl i wouldn't want to be a boy" and this baffled me. i was stunned. suddenly what i thought was a universal experience became a weird thing i felt that nobody else did. so i stopped. in order to carry on living my life "normally" i repressed any feelings i felt and carried on living as a girl. there were still signs for the entire rest of my life up until about age 12 when i really started questioning things such as hating being called pretty, hated things that were gendered like colours or certain toys, refused to wear dresses or anything 'girly', was very certain i'd never ever wear makeup and so much more. at around age 12, one of my friends at the time came out to me as bisexual. i didn't know what this meant and being the little nerd i am i decided to research. this led me down a rabbit hole of a WHOLE bunch of different queer identities that i never knew existed. i realised that i as a girl could like other girls too. i also at that time decided to identify as bisexual. up until this age i had no queer exposure at all. then a year later i went to highschool and got really engrossed in queer culture. all my friends were queer, i attended clubs for queer people the whole lot. i finally found my people. in this particular club there were a lot of trans people. i heard heaps of stories and experiences directly from trans people and everything i ever thought about my gender changed. so much made sense after that. so many thoughts and feelings i thought only i had because i was weird were actually very common things amongst trans people. so in my own time, i did masc makeup wore masc clothes etc to see how it felt. and when i looked in the mirror with a really badly contoured jaw and horrible fake stubble cause i couldn't do makeup back then i felt for the first time like i was looking at myself. that's how i knew i was trans. my personality and who i am on the inside matches the gender of a boy. ive always been a boy on the inside. even though i look at pictures of me when i dressed and presented feminine and think wow i looked so pretty, maybe i'm not trans it's not because i want to be that person. the person i was when i was a girl is beautiful, but that person isn't me. that girl was pretty, feminine, graceful but she wasn't me. i mourn that girl, but i'll never want to be her ever again. anyway, if you read this far i thank you. i just wanted to share my experience:]

NOW SOME TIPS FOR QUESTIONING PEOPLE BASED OFF MY EXPERIENCE!!:

(keeping in mind these are transmasc tips)

-i feel uncomfortable when people use she/her pronouns for me or other typically female terms e.g daughter, sister etc

-i relate to feminine things but not in a girl way. i like my long hair, but in the way guys have long hair. i like to paint my nails in the way guys can have their nails painted 

-if i was a cis guy, would i want to be a trans girl? for me absolutely not, so i know i'm not a girl

-the idea of everyone seeing me as a guy makes me really happy

-any 'masculine' compliments like handsome makes me super happy 

ALSO!! just thought i'd add i don't really identify as bi anymore. i identified as a lesbian for a bit but now i'm not a girl so idrk my identity. i guess straight? i have a gf and im only really attracted to woman but i wouldn't not date a man yk. now that i am a guy i'm not that put off by the idea of dating men compared to how i felt when i was a girl?? anyway if anyone can help me out that would be cool 

thanks for reading! :D ROCK ON

-J