Hi, guys. It's Larry/Jay. 15FtM(??). Ever since I was around 8, I wanted to do what the boys did and hang out with them. Sadly, I even went through a "girls stink" phase and my role models were my dad and male heroes. I liked it when I saw clothes that were for boys and I got super happy when my hair was cut short because I'd look like a boy. However, I was sheltered from LGBTQ stuff, so I just thought I was a tomboy.
The gender dysphoria never truly went away. When I was 11, I had another "role model", a male character. I wanted to wear a hoodie to hide my long hair and chest and "embody" his male spirit. I even wanted to be called a "he" sometimes. I stopped telling anyone and felt bad about it though when my at the time friend laughed at me.
13, I started experimenting with FtM identity because I never felt fully female like at all, and I always wanted to be like male characters I saw and identified more with them and saw myself AS them. Detransitioned or "desisted" when my girlfriend started bullying guys and especially trans guys.
On-and-off, I've been trans and from what I remember, usually being called "she" or a "girl", triggered me to start acting fem again.
But even with my family, even identifying as a girl, I feel like a boy and I felt dysphoria by being called "she".
I don't even know if I'm truly genderfluid or just FtM due to this since it seems from what I remember, I go back to being a girl due to force or feeling unaccepted.
well it's hard to know without being in an environment where you can feel safe to explore, right? so find a place where you do feel safe, assess who among your family and friends could be safe, figure out how to get to a point where you can determine the answer for yourself
because i can read your post and say, yea you seem trans and like you're just repressing it because you're not in an accepting environment. but there are so many different ways things could shake out once you find that environment. maybe you turn out to be binary trans, maybe you turn out to be genderfluid, maybe you turn out to be... cis? alright, that's probably not the case, but you see my point
there's some urgency to figure things out, if you think your family could be supportive and if you would both want and have access to the appropriate hormone treatments. that's getting more difficult by the day, unfortunately
however, aside from that, there's no real timeline to define yourself. you are allowed to just... be what you are. the more important thing is finding the safety to express that, and, if you don't have that immediately, then finding or working towards getting it
that might mean boring shit like figuring out a career and studying and doing well in school, so you can afford to leave home, if you need to, and get the treatments you might want down the line. not to say that you have to commit to anything, but to plan and give yourself options, so when you have more information, you also have more ability to act on it
you can also see if there are trans specific spaces in your area, or try to find a space online where you mesh with the people there. i've been fortunate enough to find good people on the internet, but be cautious with your personal information and slow to trust. always trust your gut instincts, as a rule, but especially for things like this
the answer to how you define yourself and "what you are" ultimately isn't nearly as important as the space and safety to explore those things. no one can tell you who you are, but having people who accept whatever that ends up being is priceless. do your best to find those people, and everything else will work itself out
.
on the note of coping with dysphoria, i always found it helpful to remind myself that my body is a meatsuit that's meant to move me through life, and that people are always going to make false assumptions about who i am from my appearance. those assumptions may be more false for one on average than another, but ultimately, it's a sparing few people who will come to know our internal world with any amount of accuracy or intimacy. this phenomenon is in no way limited to being trans, so just try your best to bear the misunderstandings, and remember that someone's impression of you doesn't reflect or change the truth of who you are