This is more of a vent than a real question.
Hi. I got diagnosed with bipolar 2 recently and started antipsychotics. I’m starting to worry that somehow my choice to transition was a result of my bipolar 2 which has been slowly setting in over the course of the past 2 or so years.
I got on HRT a year ago. My life didn’t necessarily get any better. I’m scared because now that I’ve identified I’m bipolar, my hypomania feels scarily similar to how gender euphoria feels. It’s a feeling of lightness, of feeling like you aren’t weighed down by anything. To be fair, gender euphoria didn’t have me thinking I was destined to create a piece of art that changes the whole world. But it’s a similar feeling, of dissociation lifting and feeling like you could fly.
The thing about my dysphoria is that it’s not the direct and immediate disgust that a lot of people describe. for my whole life it’s mostly been a quiet thing. As young as 4 or 5 I found myself wanting to follow the example of the women and girls around me more than the men and boys. I had long hair but cut it when I was only 6 because I got bullied for being too girly. I pretty much totally repressed those thoughts and thought of myself as a “nerd” or something, I cut my hair and faded into the background.
My dysphoria is more like high functioning depression, in that I imagine if I never knew about transition, I could’ve lived a decent life, just kind of distant from everyone. I probably could’ve written off my detachment from male identity. I don’t look at my body and feel utter disgust, it’s more like seeing a speck of dirt on the plate you’re eating from and wishing you could clean it up but you can’t get up because it’d be rude. So you sit and swallow your food, and hope you don’t get sick. Since the moment I started growing body hair, it felt like my body was dirty.
Recently I went off spiro and it’s making me re-masculinize. My mistake. I can’t tell if having masculine brain chemistry is making me realize I was wrong, or if it’s just reminding me of the start of my transition where I was really uncertain of myself.
I don’t want to be a man, I know that much. I don’t want to age as men do. I don’t want people to think of me as male. I can’t tell if that’s because of something innate, or because I’ve simply known my whole life that I don’t meet masculine standards. But at the same time, I’m not under any illusion that the standards for women are any fairer or kinder.
In a better world I think I’d rather not be judged by gender regardless of how feminine my ideal self is.
I haven’t been doing enough for my transition, I think. I struggle to untangle my gender still. I thought for a while I was somewhat a butch lesbian, or agender, but I can’t tell if that’s true, or just another manifestation of me being too depressed to take care of myself and dress how I really want. The thing is, I’m 6 feet tall, and pretty wide. It’s almost assuredly true that barring some serious medical advances that I’ll never pass as anything. I want to believe it’s possible to dress in a way that makes me look thinner, and lose a little weight but it feels so entirely random. I see the reflection of my full body in window and some days the shape looks 1.5 times wider than it does on other days and I don’t know why.
I worry sometimes that maybe the media is right, and we’re all a cult. I feel like I have to be happy, or nobody will take my desire to be non-male seriously. I feel like recognizing myself in the mirror will never be enough, if I’m not happy. I know I can’t live up to the right’s standards for trans people.
I feel like maybe I might just throw it all away and go back to being a man if the US gets that bad, because dysphoria doesn’t make me want to die, it makes me feel like I’m not living to begin with. And I think I prefer living in sadness and depression to being dead, much as I’d love to be strong and fight for myself.
I think the antipsychotics I’m on are making my thoughts and feelings a lot clearer, and alleviating a whole second layer of dissociation that I didn’t even know was there. But I can’t tell what this means for my gender.
The more I type, the more I feel like crying. So I guess there’s at least some kind of pain here. I feel like I never grieved over the loss of my childhood to apathy and alienation from myself but I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.
I really wish my life was as simple as “if I transition, I can be happy and truly myself”.