Hello! I hope you're well! Please only answer this if you have time, but I wanted to ask if or how your experiences of (de)transition changed your outlook on life or changed what matters to you? Maybe this is a strange question, but by the time I detransitioned I think the experience of transitioning had changed me in ways that I couldn't predict or understand before transitioning, and I think that contributed to my decision to change tack. I guess I wondered if you can relate.
Gosh, yes. Both my transition and detransition changed how I look at life and priorities. It's too much to go over in one sitting, so I'll just write about what's been on my mind most recently: Resilience and the ability to recognize when you need to change course, even in the face of insurmountable challenges and sunk costs, even when there's no going back.
Transitioning in the first place already takes serious guts. It's not easy. And then, when you look back at how much you invested and sacrificed for your transition, only to be unhappy with it... detransitioning is pretty damn soul-crushing!
Something I've noticed personally: many other challenges in my adulthood have paled in comparison to the challenge that detransition has been. It feels like I can't be phased by most things anymore. Between dealing with detransitioning itself, and dealing with the social consequences of being ambiguous in appearance and refusing to Prettify myself, I've developed a thick skin.
I think that detransitioners have direct evidence in our lives that we are able to recognize when something isn't going well for us, and are able to take action to steer ourselves in new directions, even without the support or approval of others. We're capable of dropping anything that is no longer serving us, no matter what we might have paid to have it in the first place.
I don't know how to tell you how valuable this is, and how difficult & uncommon it is to develop this presence of mind, this ability/willingness to Let Go in the face of uncertainty.
It's not unique to detransitioners; we aren't all that special. But we've got lived experiences that we can look back on, that prove to us what we are capable of. There is little room for self-doubt when we’ve repeatedly demonstrated just how far we’ll go in order to live a fulfilling life.
I don't write much about my life on Tumblr, keeping it fairly limited in scope for the sake of anonymity and my general well-being. But, there's more to my life than my detransition, and just like everyone else, I'm dealing with the consequences of many decisions made before I reached maturity. Not all of which I'm necessarily happy about.
Right now I'm in the midst of a full-blown crisis about my career, quickly trying to make plans to get out of IT/academia and into a skilled trade. I want to leave the desks & computers behind, to get outside and work with my hands. My younger self never would have seen this coming, nor would any of my family or friends. I've actually kept mostly quiet about it, because there will be doubters and naysayers.
But even something like a career meltdown, an experience that causes many people the biggest disturbance/grief in their lives, feels fairly painless in comparison to what detransitioning was like. In myself, I recognize many of the same feelings of regret, feeling trapped, sadness over all the years spent invested in this one thing, feeling let down by a past self that was so sure of what would be "best" for my future, fear of the unknown and uncertain, etc... But it's not new to me. This kind of experience doesn't rattle me to my core anymore. I can just kind of... roll with it now.
Don't get me wrong, I feel distressed. (GOD, do I feel it right now!) But I don't feel hopeless. I recognize the emotions for what they are: beacons that are guiding me in the direction I need to go. My world is not ending, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm on my way there.
My feeling is very much, "I've survived detransitioning. I'm surviving and living in this world as a weird, bald, bearded lady. If I can do all that, I can do anything."
I believe wholeheartedly in us. In you, in me, in all of us.
