Hi~ I have determined I'm trans

This page covers an abridgement of my jorny[sic] to realizing, ideally some memes/media that helped me along the way, and possibly an easter egg or two.

I made this page like the day after I decided I was trans. I was pointed toward a clinic that could evaluate me for medical transition. I procrastinated even looking at the booking page, let alone complete it.

This page collects previous reasoning and ongoing experiences for why I'm continuing on this pathway.

Needs a couple more tumblr posts for reference but otherwise presentable.

Gender Expression - Physically

From early elementary school, I'd look in the mirror and been like "That's supposed to be me?"
I think even at a young age, I was like damn if something removed that thang off me I'd be like good riddence.
I basically never pee standing. Bad vibes.
When I undress before a shower, I pointedly avoid looking at my crotch when I'm visible in a mirror - to the point where i've held up my hand to block the view. Ain't nobody should be seeing that.
Arguably relieved that I never grew chest hair
Avoided shaving as long as possible because I was told it would make the hair grow faster and I super didn't want that
Have never related to manly activities growing up, never into physical activities
I absolutely love wearing nail polish and since starting I wear it more than I don't
I've bought multiple skirts at this point, and every time I wear one I start fantasizing about outfits I could wear to complement them.
I finally have big hoop earrings and they make me feel so cute
I've gotten really antsy about my hair and have just been letting it grow over the year. I have Always had my hair extremely short and I didn't realize that it could look so cute long?

Brain Space

Have never made long term plans. "Where do you see yourself in five years?" "IDK i try not to think about it"
I went through the TV Tropes page for Gender Bender, checked every webcomic entry for the premises I liked and read most of them. My favs included El Goonish Shive and the Wotch - which have regular MtF genderbending as a conerstone of the stories.
I'd also browse Smackjeeves (a generic website host for the early 2010s) genderbend tagged comics. Read dozens of gender bend webcomics and wondered why the protagonist was unhappy suddenly being a girl? Ungrateful?? I'll take your place?? ~~Please?~~
If you were online in the early 2010's you were probably aware of the "Rules of the Internet". Quite infamously, rule 34 - if it exists there's porn of it. It takes a certain kind of person to know Rule 63 off by heart (if it exists, there's a genderbent version of it).
I have been enjoying all manner of TGTF slop on deviantart since at least 2015. I mean there's definitely other stuff (ASFR is the only one I'll grant you) but this is the umbrella for the weird horny turns-man-into-clay-and-then-lovingly-reforms-them-into-a-beautiful-woman that hit so many sweet spots. A decade of inexplicable jealousy.
Between the webcomics and deviant art, there were always times when I would think:
- What if this time I wake up with boobs? That I get to see my long hair over one eye and feel a weight on my chest. Would I have to check my undergarments to confirm the changes? Would I be thinking more about whether my ID's were already up to date, or would I just enjoy the moment?
- If future me visited, would it be like those comics where the tongue-in-cheek punchline was a transition. If I were in that boat, that would be a pretty strong reason to start changes asap. It sure would be nice to have that confidence. And if that visit happened and I wasn't different but a friend was, would I feel a crushing jealousy?
- Sometimes I'd think about some hypothetical girl's only event (slumber party, or hangout of some kind, or just like a group where it would be all girls and I'm nearby) and there's always like a soft wish of I would gratefully step out of my current body to attend and participate in that.
I had heard how I Saw the TV Glow was one of those egg-cracker films, and I was initially underwhelmed. But it hasn't left my mind and it's only gotten more distracting. IDK I still feel like maybe I'm just lying and I should die a man and I'm screaming to a frozen arcade room.

Gender Expression - Digitally

In Runescape, there's a gender-change wizard. I learned about that in like 2008, and ever since I have debated trans-ing my self-insert-adjacent. It's 30k gp and yes I just know that off hand.
Got jealous that little sister (didn't know that at the time) made a girl Mii, so I made a gamer girl xbox avatar. Very quietly what I wished I could look like. Flared jeans, green gamer tshirt, curled hair, small silver hoop earings...
When I made a Guild Wars 2 character, she was a beautiful above-avg height woman with chainmail, magic, and a big hammer (honestly Sister of Battle coded). And i'd fucking rp walk around and rp mouse look at women who walked by and felt so so immersed
I borrowed a Valve vr headset for game development while in college, and an early part of the process was downloading the unity default anime girl (who was t-posed) and then getting a bit giddy about the idea of aligning my arms to match the pose and seeing the girl body instead.
Heard that cross-avataring in VR Chat was like a sure-fire way to help illuminate what you'd want as your body and thought about being a girl for an ordinary amount of time
Fortnite skin Twyn is a buff soldier man that puts on a vr headset and literally becomes a slim punk girl with an undercut, purple skirt and platform boots and you fuckin' KNOW I grinded out the battle pass till I got her. My friends were like "man this battlepass got nobody good" and i was like UM boy becomes cute girl hello
Hey, at one point Fortnite had a cool wolf power that came from a female singer model with a wolf head cover. And you'd stand in a designated area, do the dance, and the girl's hologram would slowly slide over your model and you'd become a ~~girl~~ yourself but with wolf powers.
At one point, my buddy convinced me and another to play Roblox. And one such game was called Womanly Infection (which is of course a standard Infection gamemode, wherein 'normal people' shoot 'zombies' until they become them. In this case the 'zombies' were themed girls). There were like two dozen methods in the environment to get infected (such as if you fall in a pool you become a beach girl with an innertube. The normal part was playing. The sus part was then after the fact making a document tracking what each girl variant looks as to become the cutest one, for science. (I remembered the moth girl and the obama girl, but there was like gamer, vampire, anthro-horse, Supreme, Dream minecraft girls and more)
When I was playing [Prototype] 2 (a game about violence and absorbing people to take their form), went out of my way to consume women so I can play as one for a bit, and did lament that all the NPC's that disguise-gated content were all men so I had to shift from being a woman to play those missions. I did forget about all that during standard gameplay, but I guess arguably whenever I thought about who I was presenting as I did wonder why it couldn't be a woman.
Fanart of Elster and Ariane has embedded itself in my head. I really wish i looked like Elster and had a cute girlfriend...

Complications

Raised in a religious environment with strong gender segregation. Locked into my own track in life. Lots of guilt and shame about everything
Raised with minimal emotional support. Always wondering if I don't feel like a man because I want to distance myself from my father or perhaps because he made me feel like my existence is an ongoing mistake/disappointment.
Rarely strong disassociation with assigned gender (AMAB) but definitely pretty weak association. ~~could be non-biney but that's also trans~~

Conscious Timeline

2013 - Reading webcomics on my own laptop, and read a lot of genderbend/genderswap webcomics. The guys finding themselves in a woman's form always felt so ungrateful? Sometimes the story was of their eventual acceptance, but I always figured I'd simply take it well immediately.
2015 - Had been told by church sources my whole life never to look at porn because it makes you objectify real women and hurt them. I have a loophole in high school in illustrated kinks, and there's a ton of forcefem or tgtf (trans gender transformation) that I ended up saving images of.
2017 - A ballpark but I had been on tumblr for years, and like didn't understand trans folk, until eventually I read some informative posts about intersex individuals. Figured damn, if biology really is a spectrum, who knows, let anyone transition if it makes them happier?
Dec 2023 - My little sister came out as trans and I was desparately comparing her experiences to mine. I still think we're really different but it was worth looking into.
Aug 2024 - My first girlfriend was trans. We started exchanging info over Hinge while I was in LA. We kissed on our first date, but we didn't grow that close after the following couple. She had asked immediately if I was familiar with trans girls, and then later expressed concern that some folks had come out after dating her and she suspected they were exploring their own gender almost at her expense (in that she wanted a nice boyfriend and not a girlfriend). At some point I tried nail polish and she cut ties shortly therafter. I kind of swore off dating because I was like, I probably should sort out if she's right or not.
Sept 2024 - Was told to try doing a cross dress Halloween costume just to see whether the vibe worked. I was sooo antsy about it. Settled on Yosano Akiko from Bungo Stray Dogs, a badass medic girl. Had to hunt down clothing items and figure out how to make a prop sword, and the opportunity kept me awake at night for like two weeks with excitement and nervousness. I think I expected more emotion when i tried on the skirt and outfit, but I think it was also the first time I felt dysphoria properly? Like I put on blouse, skirt, stockings, gloves, tie, wig and everything felt fantastic but I looked in the mirror with such disappointment at my face and chest ruining the look. I won the party's award for cutest and was stunned. I was really happy in my own world and I guess it came across?
Nov 2024? - At some point between early 2024 and Jan 2025, I got two haircuts from my roommates friend. And the first time, I was like, just give me something that looks good. After watching my lesbian roommates get haircuts, something about getting mine done in a completely different style gave me a weird hollow pang in my heart? Something about how it's just another thing I'm being subjected to, but I think also a longing of like, I want to belong with my roommates? In a really abstract way.
Dec 2024 - My older sister squinted at my hair and laughed, singing that I was balding. I brushed it off at the time, but there was a day the following January where I felt the thinning on top of my head, and felt such a visceral "no this is wrong if I die without transitioning I will die unfulfilled". I actually put on my halloween wig for the rest of the day to calm down. It's cool though, the feeling subsided within a couple days 👍️
April 2025 - Instagram kept presenting me with tgirl influencer content and I keep watching them, especially the ones that are like 'how do i know if i'm trans'. At first it was all funny and such, but I was realizing how jealous I was of them having transitioned and being so beautiful.
May 2025 - Instagram is giving me voice training content and I started practicing along side them
May 2025 - Bought mascara and eyeliner and have worn both out to events.
May 2025 - At one point I felt my body freeze up while working. I mechanically shaved, put on what makeup i had, switched to a skirt/tights/floral shirt and just felt a sense of relief? That's cis, right?
May/June 2025 - Worked through the workbook You and Your Gender Identity by Dara Hoffman-Fox. Really useful book actually, starts off making you record activities that are safe/rewarding so you can prep/cooldown after doing the excercises. Then assigns your voices of self-doubt and fear to personified characters so you can make time to let them speak. One of my first notes was that I needed to try estrogen because it would always be a nagging what if. Anyway, some of the first excersises are how you interacted with gender expression growing up, and like. I didn't. Everything was done to me. I was in a uniform for school, and just let it wash over me. I think the first time I noticed was feeling good about wearing a suit for grad (where my lil trans sister Hated it). More on that prior i think.
June 2025 - Got really drunk one night and told some of my besties I was trans. I immediately felt a 5 year plan form regarding where that puts me, what kind of outfits I'd want to wear, what other milestones I've heard would be hit during a medical transition.
Didn't trust any of the above and browsed The Gender Dysphoria Bible while trying to distract myself with video games. It was so pointedly relable that I put a trans flag in the bio of one of my socials
July 2025 - Booked an HRT Consultation, to see if they'd diagnose me with gender dysphoria. Made this page a week prior to collate evidence.
In September 2025, I was worried I was overstating my "gender dysphoria diagnosis" and wrote my poem Statues
November 2025 - After sleeping through the morning appointment pre-cruise October, finally got an appointment about starting hormones. Prescription acquired and started the next day or so.
November 2025 - Within a few days of starting, I was so visibly light and happy that my friends asked what the change was from
December 2025 - A few days before Christmas, I wrote Future Me is a Girl and Dominoes.

Rename the new me

I've been thinking about this for ~~over a month~~ like half a year now. I know I want Valerie as a name but can't decide on anything else.

or press 'space'

🥺 Goals

😍 Women 😘

Hehe 🤡

Split between transition goals and possibly my type? I think we're in sapphic* territory.

* Which I will not be confirming until months into the process to see if it was strictly jealosy and/or like a himejoshi** situation.

** Because like I see women kissing and I wish one of them was me but like we all do that. The real thing is like my sense of self is like brain and like a good half foot in front of me? You ever see like a Video Game camera module that has viewing minimum and maximum and you slide the minimum so it's outside of your avatar because no one would want to actually see that....? You know what, actually don't think about that.