“you don’t know how you feel, don’t try to feel a label.”

My wife has been saying the exact same thing for months. It is incredibly difficult to change your thinking process like that and I’m still not there. Kudos to you for getting there! I think with enough therapy I’ll get there too lol

I’m in my late 30s so our age difference isn’t too great. These feelings came out of nowhere and are SO confusing.

"The Moment", a lot of oversharing, and possibly relevant trauma dumping (sorry)

My realisation came when I was in between therapy sessions and trying to unpack childhood trauma. I was quite the angry person, and my therapist said “let’s try a softer approach” and the word “soft” triggered me like milk coming to a boil. I couldn’t figure out why. A few days later I was cleaning and “processing” and picked up my wife’s skirt and put it on my lap because it looked cute (a little black lace and tulle one) and the elation I felt was off the charts. I felt soo happy, and then like most of my happy moments at the time, it was fleeting. I had to break the news and it was an extremely rough time.

Back in therapy, most of the events that I could remember were abusive, but couldn’t figure out why until after that day. Almost all of them were because I would be playing with my sisters’ dolls, “mother’s” makeup, being affectionate and telling family members that I loved them, wanting to wear colourful clothes (it was the 90s for pete’s sake), I was too SOFT, and things like that so we concluded that it was beaten out of me. Now I wonder how I would be if I had a supportive and nurturing family?

Tangent over. Here I am inching closer to my 40s with a lot of unresolved teenage angst, more questions, confusion, and everything in between and beyond. I didn’t understand. There were SO MANY SIGNS that I (and everyone else apparently) ignored/were blind to. It’s a lot of picking up the pieces, and it does get better as time goes on. At least I think it does. As I said last night, labelling is still the biggest issue. I never felt like I fit in anywhere, and now I feel like I fit in here on blahaj.zone. I ran away from Mastodon last year because I encountered a bigot (from our own community, no less) that made me feel like absolute dog shit for not feeling dysphoric enough to want HRT. I’m back on there now, and have been since I came to Lemmy, but I may move that over to the main blahaj.zone since I post more about gender than tech.

I feel you on the body stuff too. Like, I want to present more femme, I have big-ass shoulders for guys even. I am also one of the hairiest people I’ve ever seen in my life, like literally continuously head to toe, front and back. How do I not look like “creep in a dress”?

The hhaaaairr!!! I have this cluster of hairs on the inner corner of my mouth that grows back every 3 days. THREE. I was told that waxing and plucking was supposed to make it last longer. It aaabsolutely does not! I feel like we’ve been lied to lmao it makes me not want to even attempt laser removal because of how expensive the treatments can be, for what may be little personal gain. My 5:00 shadow starts less than an hour after shaving and can definitely relate.

If you don’t mind, I have a tip to help with some of your shoulder dysphoria. Pad your hips if you can. This video by Bernadette Banner helped me understand quite a bit on how to style for the body I have. I lost a lot of weight in the past few years, and I managed to lose weight everywhere except for my chest and hips. The rest is loose skin, and I have a bit of a natural “ratio” going that my wife is jealous of if I use a shaper and boob tape lol… I still hate my shoulders and body overall because long things become short things, but padding the hips definitely helps with the silhouette image if you want to give that a try. A-line skirts and dresses are my favourite kind, as they taper on the way down and then poof back out after the waist. Perfect for our shapes!

“Creep in a dress”… ugh. I hate those thoughts, and they are frequent. I wear high waisted skinny jeans and leggings out in public with a blazer, hoodie, or t-shirt most of the time because of those thoughts. They rule my life. I buy dresses in public, drape them over myself to check fit, buy them, and scurry home to take pics for my wife and friends so that they can tell me I’m pretty 💀 It’s not healthy and I cannot wait for the general public to not give a shit about what I wear.

Also, as I understand to idea of “trans”, it can be as broad as not being 100% inline with gender/body ideas, non binary could be considered under the umbrella of trans.

I agree. Nonbinary could and should fall under that umbrella. Some nonbinary people undergo HRT to conform to their dominant side so it absolutely should apply. :)

This has gotten quite a bit long, its a passionate subject 😂