#if they allow trans women to exist freely and peacefully

[werevulvi]

I've been thinking a lot lately... about my detransition. That in some sense I kinda want to look manly, physically, but not be a man. Like I don't wanna be bio male even if I could. I'm happily female. I love my wide hips, vagina, soft skin and other female sex traits, but I also like looking a little manly, with male secondary sex traits. Like it gives a nicely rough edge to my otherwise softness that I can't help but adore. I do like looking a little... fugly. Like a ragged pet cat or dog with odd features that's still totally adorable.

Just like that ragged pet cat or dog, I don't wanna look like a propped up, plasticky and dolled up version of my human species. I may be feminine but not like that. For me femininity is creativity, and the moment it starts limiting my life negatively, I need to take a step back and review my priorities.

My dysphoria seems to change again. Becoming less intense, more bearable. Which allows me to take a step closer towards it. Thouch it with less panic and sadness.

I still love my beard, and that I have the ability to grow it. I can't part with it. I can go weeks, even months, completely hating it and just wanting it gone, but then I always end up breaking down, exclaiming to myself in panic how much I love it and don't ever want to lose it. That means something, even if it's seldom.

Back in my transitioning, when I still lived as a man, I really loved my beard and showed my love to it. I grew it out to a couple of inches and shaped it into a "ducktail" style (pointy and neat full beard) that took a long time and many trials and errors to learn how to get it right. It grows thick and very evenly all over. Even where it's thinner it's faded and symmetrical. I know I've wanted to be able to grow such a beard ever since I was 12 years old, but thought it was a pipe dream. It wasn't. It became my reality. I bought tons of products for it: schampos, conditioners, oils, brushes, even jewellery. I loved caring for it, brushing, washing, trimming, styling, dyeing. And when at home alone I loved just stroking it and resting my hand in its fluffiness.

It was both a comfort and an accesory.

No matter how many times I've said since my detransitioning that I hate my beard... the truth is I don't. I hate my skin problems that get way worse because of my beard no matter what I do with it. I hate the societal shit that comes along with having it as a feminine woman. The pressure to be hairless is impending. Not just to be considered "attractive" but to be flat out "not ugly" or "gross." Gender confines me, as it does for probably most women. Trying to be feminine as I want to be while still retaining my freedom to be natural feels like society is telling me I can't both have the cake and eat it at the same time. Oh the irony, am I right?

Just because I'm maybe 80% feminine, the 20% of me that isn't is a struggle in this world. That 20% that loves having a beard, a deep voice, refuses to wear high heels, grow long nails or wear a wig to cover my receeded hairline. That wants to take space, spread my legs and pick my nose in public, that takes pride in being scarred cause it's a sign of my survival, that curses like a sailor even in front of children, wants to learn how to fight and defend myself, and won't ever say "I'm sorry" for shit I have not done wrong or stay silent when men are being shitty. That is a lesbian and doesn't care much for men.

The ruthless warrior in me that needs to exist just as much as the princess in me. I am the yin to my own yang and both sides need to be able to co-exist peacefully together.

My clothes, makeup, beard, deep voice or my breast forms don't determine or define if I'm a man or a woman. My bio sex does, and it says female. Then it doesn't, or shouldn't, matter that other people think I'm a man in drag or a fake detransitioner... cause apparently I did so well in my efforts to appear male during my transition (and god knows I put in a lot of effort) that now the irony is I'm not believed to really be a woman in my nervous detransition when I'm finally ready to embrace my bio sex, after many years of trauma that made me try to escape my reality.

I may laugh and shake my head at the irony in that, but the actual situation is quite horrible to be in. I try to shake it off and ignore however I'm perceived by random strangers that I don't give a fuck about, but the world around me affects me against my will. How can I freely choose to not pass as female when I don't want to be or see myself as a man, or even as masculine? And no, I don't think of myself as non-binary at all. I'm not even trans, the way I see it. I'm just a hairy, deep-voiced woman without tits, that's all. I think of it as that I don't have a gender at all, and I don't think gender as an innate thing is real. Although I'm sure people feel whatever they feel. But I'm just a bio female person who's finally made peace with my natal anatomy to have for myself to love, but also detransitioning and struggling to figure out what I really want with that.

I only have one body and one life. I need to make the best and most of it, to the best of my ability. And if I can't, then it's better to do nothing.

I need to avoid making more permanent changes that I'd end up regretting. I know that if I'd get my beard lasered off I'd regret it, with no way of getting it back. I can't put myself through that pain. But is the pain of living with the beard worse in the long run? That's what I can't figure out. So I'm kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place about that.

I don't know what I want to do with my body, or my life. I can't put the two together. How to implement my body into my life and make the two work together. What to do with this half transitioned, masculinised mess that my body became, I do not know. What kind of activities I want to fill my life with and how. If I could ever have a job, or even cats. How to manage practicing karate or go swimming with the massive inconveniences and insecurities that my face and chest are. How to manage a relationship and sex with all this grief and fluctuating dysphoria weighing me down and killing my mood. How to deal with any and all kinds of social interactions, private and public ones, when my body is what it is.

I created this god damned mess and I don't know how to detangle it.

Cause it makes me feel so many painful things about the way I look. The very visible, life altering effects of my traumas. It's hard to face, it's hard to love. My transition traits feels much like scars from abuse... but who would I be without them? They're part of me now, thus they are lovable, and they don't make me ugly. What is it even that I regret? That my traumas made me dysphoric so to the point I thought I was trans and that transitioning was the only way I could survive? That I didn't figure out earlier that transitioning was the wrong move for me? That I forced myself, despite my alarming doubts, to go through with top surgery, because I saw no other way?

It's a tragedy and I do grieve, but I only tried to do the best that I could with what I knew about myself back then, and unfortunately it was the wrong route. I forgive myself for that. Because no one should be beat up for such a mistake. That I don't look clearly either male or female puts me off, but I also don't want to change it, other than my chest.

The more I think of it, it's not so bad and I can make art with that too. I want to make art of my pain... not erase it.

Would the gender clinic grant me new tits and let me change my legal gender marker back to female, if I decide to keep my beard, though? I'm a little worried about that. Also if they'd medically classify me as non-binary due to wanting to have both male and female sex traits, I'd fucking raise HELL. Medical praxis my ass, no one mis-labels me with bullshit that goes against my beliefs, against my will. Just saying.

It's been almost 9 months since I began my detransition at the beginning of July last year, and I've been on and off about almost every trait/part that I changed to appear more male ever since then. It seems my chest is the only thing I've been sure about all along. But I'll need to challenge that too. Would going out without a bra under my dress really be so bad? We'll see. I seem to be morbidly fascinated by my own misery.

Detransitioning is such a strange experience.