I don't want to be stereotypically feminine, therefore I can't be a woman.

Now I recognize that as internalized misogyny that I'm battling on top of internalized transphobia!

I can't be trans, I just spend 8 hours a day thinking about whether I'm trans or not for the past 5 years

I just wanted to deny it because being trans is kinda scary, even after accepting myself there is still some doubt from time to time that I'm just faking it (I know this is normal thing for trans people so I try to ignore it).

"It's just a weird sex fantasy, not part of who I am."

*proceeds to live in denial, despite the persistent nature of those feelings, 'til the term "nonbinary" finally reached my ears *

The old classic "I'm way too masculine to transition so I'd never be happy with myself, may as well tough it out". And in retrospect it was full-on denial, I'm pretty much as androgynous as someone who's gone through male puberty can get lol

My egg cracking as far as I remember started as a very sudden out of the blue thought of "You're a girl" while I was just sitting in class and that thought just kept repeating constantly in my head for weeks. It was so loud I could hardly think of anything else.

I was very confused and afraid about what it meant but I didn't push it away and I spent a lot of time thinking about it and experimenting with my gender and about 1 month later I accepted myself as a trans woman.

I don't remember thinking that I couldn't be a trans woman, but I remember slowly edging towards it, and I first considered myself to be a femboy, then a demigirl, and then finally arriving at trans woman.

"This would be the finishing blow to my pathetic career, who would hire/contract a weirdo like me?" Yeah turns out it didn't hurt my career in any way and reasonable people only look at results.

"Everybody wishes their body had completely different (smaller) proportions, that's completely normal.

Everybody is uncomfortable with body hair, it's just super normalized to not say/do anything about it.

It's completely normal to not relate all that well with other dudes.

It's completely normal to react to other dudes being jealous of [insert masculine feature] (giggity) with a halfhearted chuckle, then divert the conversation."

Body hair… I was convinced there was no hope & that I’d never be able to afford to get rid of it all.

Lasers do magic y’all.

"I was born a male, obviously that means I'm a Man. What else could I be? Obviously feeling disconnected from manhood and masculinity is normal"

Because women liked me as a guy.

Then one day someone was interested, but not just that. She was also genuinely emotionally available and I knew that's what I wanted.

Up until that point I had only been with emotionally reserved women. After a lot of consideration I figured out that that wasn't for me any more.

But.. for some unexpected reason I was overcome by fear, and I just stood there all frozen. I knew I was ready and got lucky and wanted to connect, but I was just so deeply frightened somehow. It was confusing and I gave her short answers. I felt bad for her.

I waited for her to leave. After like 15 minutes or so she finally got the message and left. I didn't want her to leave.

It confused me and that's when I realized it was simply because I couldn't show my true self and my emotions.

After that I started taking it very seriously and within months my egg cracked, and I realized how sad my life would be without me.

"It must just be a phase...I'll grow out of it any day now....any day now...ANY DAY NOW"

hmmm... it was so long ago that i thought like that. i think i felt like i was too masculine to pass, and asked myself what the point of transitioning was if i didnt. this obviously was very untrue. i feel after being transitioned for 10+ years now, most binary trans people pass as cis after a long bout of hrt. of course passing is not the end all be all, though it does make life a bit easier in more transphobic areas.

i also had some bizarre ideas about how i needed to change my personality to be more feminine in order to be truly trans. also very silly, im just me but now everyone sees me as a woman, i didnt need to change anything about how i acted

I can't be trans cause there's no way to change my Y into an X.

Hard to tell, but considering this video is what caused my egg cracking, the video hit the nose on all the excuses I was using.

The main reason I thought I wasn't trans before my egg-cracking is that I didn't know what dysphoria looked like, and I didn't think I experienced adequately severe dysphoria or that whatever gender in-congruence I felt was "clinically relevant" enough to count as trans.

I would read the DSM-V criteria and think "that doesn't match my experiences".

What helped change this (besides those Transition Channel youtube videos) was reading The Gender Dysphoria Bible, reading Julia Serano (esp. Whipping Girl and Sexed Up), reading Mia Violet's Yes, You are Trans Enough, and reading peer reviewed journal articles, like Dick Swaab's work (e.g. this 2008 article).

Never thought I could actually be and be percived for who I am