at age 10 i decided i was going to be transgender. i tell people it was because i felt like a boy, but in truth it was because a cosplayer i liked was also trans. i feel like i created a self-fullfilling prophecy; everyday i told myself i wanted to be a guy, i conditioned myself to see myself as a male and by the time i realised i wasnt really trans 8 years later it was too late. i managed to give myself reverse gender dysphoria. it took me a little while, but after a few months of presenting female again i could finally see myself as a woman. even today i feel strange about going into the womens bathroom or locker rooms out of fear that people will recognise me and assume im a biological male trying to be a woman.
this alone has been a huge contributer to my feelings of lacking an identity.
so what can we learn from this?
while my family told me to wait it out until i was older and see how i felt then, i used to internet to find a little echo chamber where people told me that i was definately trans. i probably had identity issues beforehand, but that was never questioned. my advice to anybody questioning their gender is to assess why you really feel that way. is it because you dont feel a connection to members of the same sex? then youre just different like me. not being like the other girls doesnt mean youre a girl.
but most of all, please please please at least try to acccept yourself as you are rather than changing yourself to become a different person entirely. if you need drugs and surgeries to be happy, then you may never truly be happy.
this being said, this has been my experience. no part of me believes that real trans folks dont exist - they have for centuries across different cultures. i just think that nowadays we dangle the idea of transness as a get-away for deeper issues within the youth.