Any general advice? Don’t try x, or definitely look into y? Be aware of Z?
Finasteride is real and it works, and you actually are bothered by balding you’re just pretending you’re not
If I could go back and talk to a younger me at the start of her transition, we’d talk about how this is the chance to ACTUALLY learn about myself and to really take time and care to not sweat the details or get stuck in a rut. Try everything and figure out what’s actually you and what is just some baggage or ideal you’re trying to live up to. Don’t be afraid to say yes. Also, don’t be afraid to say no. Keep both open as your options for everything: clothing styles, makeup (if you wanna), hair stuff, sexuality and attraction, etc.
To be clear, I still feel like I managed my way through it and found my way to a rough approximation of what’s right for me eventually, but I was often too hard on myself and placed restrictions where there really weren’t any beyond what I was enforcing on myself. It really is Puberty 2 in so many ways, and you really need to lean into the lessons about how much any of it actually matters from Puberty 1… if at all possible.
That’s how I feel like I would probably go through it. I also tend to set expectations or rules that don’t necessarily need to exist. Weirdly, once I had the realization, it has gotten anxiously more difficult to say yes to things(buying clothes or whatever). Maybe part of me is afraid of what it means?
So far:
Essentially everything that would have told me a few years ago that my wish to be a woman was REALLY not something that cis-people experience and what the actual diagnostic criteria for gender-dysphoria were.
I was SOOO close to getting it about 10 years ago, it’s mind-boggling. Like I talked to other trans-people I knew at the time about how I suspected that I was trans, I read up on the topic and in the end stupidly decided that all my issues were only that I was lonely and that the only reason I wanted to be a girl was because it would have made dating so much easier and that that wouldn’t translate into dating as a trans-woman.
I mean, yes, this was a real problem I had, but there were so many other signs that it was not just that and I completely ignored that cis people would not respond to that problem with the wish for a different gender. It’s really as stupid as it sounds, and it cost me very dearly in so many ways.
