Delayed transition for health reasons, sharing/venting

Sorry in advance, this is a long one! 😅

I'm a late bloomer, 40 y.o. AMAB. Had a complete unequivocal realization of my gender identity only last March. After that I basically couldn't unsee it even though growing up as an elder millennial shit was super toxic and it was tough for the first couple months wishing life didn't suddenly get that much more difficult.

I'm now in my 11th year of recovering from chronic Lyme disease, and my 22nd year of Lyme overall. More than half my life lost to constant pain, sensory and cognitive disruption, chronic debilitating muscle spasms, and a relentlessly stupid medical industry that misdiagnosed me with fibromyalgia and let my health rot for 10+ years until someone finally suggested a second opinion.

I mean, I blame myself too. I can't just point the finger. But I'm also autistic and have tended to just accept rules and determinations from authoritative figures. Only found out I have autism a few years ago so I spent most of my life with certain tendencies like that while being largely unaware of them. A real clusterf**k. 😂😭

Add autism to Lyme, plus the fact that I'm a redhead, and it's basically been relentless multi-decade ongoing, overwhelming physical suffering and trauma. I've been diagnosed with complex trauma PTSD. I also have multiple gene mutations for methylation like MTHFR which makes it so much more difficult to maintain vitamin levels, detox from Lyme dieoff, and of course to do anything transition related.

Insofar as HRT, I basically can't tolerate any pharmacological medicine while recovering from Lyme. But there's another complication: I had real breasts as a teen. "Gynecomastia." I had a double mastectomy when I was 16, in 2002.

That's the thing that hurts the most. I basically have to not think about it because of how upsetting it is. Doubly so because, being autistic, I had zero awareness of trans people even existing back then or any ability to think outside the box about it, and was basically just buried under the sense of societal pressure of needing to fit in and live as a man. I'm also on the lesbian-to-bisexual spectrum, somewhere between gynosexual and Saturnic, so being attracted to cis women at a time when queerness just meant sexuality was super confusing too.

It's crazy also because I have memories of trans experiences going back to preschool, like gravitating towards the girls in gymnastics class and being rejected and told I was "weird" and that I was supposed to be with the boys. Or discovering Ranma 1/2 at Blockbuster when I was 10 and having such intense feelings and confusion that I refused to even go near the shelf after that day.

Besides my mastectomy I've had two other unnecessary surgeries, a tummy tuck and a enlarged lymph node removal that turned out to be benign. The surgical scars have been a major hurdle in the Lyme recovery. My younger sister is also trans and fully transitioned with all the surgeries so I've been witness to that as well, and even the idea of going through with it myself is traumatizing. That was honestly the biggest block to recognizing I was trans; I'd had the inkling for several years but I told myself that if I was, I'd want the surgeries no matter what. Turns out, nope. I've just been through too much and I need time to heal before I can even think about it. Thankfully Lyme recovery is going well and it's only a matter of time. But still...

I don't know if I'll ever want HRT, even. Because I want my real breasts back. I know medicine is working on breast reconstruction for women, no idea when that will be available or how I'll pay for it but the thought at least gives me hope. And because my natural hormone profile is probably closer to a woman's than most AMABs I don't really experience a chemical dysphoria the way my sister did which was helped by her starting HRT. Even when I was living as a cis man, without my breasts, I always had the natural instinct to keep my chest covered. And the surface nerves and sensation from having real breast development as an adolescent is all still powerful and present for me as if they're still there. So it's complicated, and confusing, and I'm just taking it slowly.

That said it's hard to do even minor transition stuff. My skin is super sensitive, I have dermatitis, so it's been hard to grow out my hair or get a smooth shave that doesn't leave me with a five o'clock shadow. I haven't really tried makeup because I'm afraid of skin reactions especially with dermatitis that pops up on my eyelids. I try not to let it get to me because it's all improving as I recover but in the meantime my nervous system is so hyper-sensitized that even minor irritations can really throw me off and make me utterly miserable because they feel so intense.

I've at least begun to transition my warddrobe but I'm mostly sticking to gender neutral and androgynous-looking clothes because of how I still present. I live in NY just outside of Queens but my actual town can lean a little more conservative and with my sensitivities and trauma I'm more concerned with feeling safe while finding a middle ground to be myself than fully putting my identity on display.

Thankfully I belong to a really good meditation group that's all about letting go of stuff and I've been able to release a lot of my self-perception of being a guy. I'm finally talking like myself cadence-wise, and as a former musical theater major I'm slowly training my voice into a higher register that feels comfortable to me.

My biggest hangup is probably when I think about relationships with women or gender-non-conforming feminine people who I perceive as more feminine than me. People have always touted me as being "handsome" and having "rugged good looks" as a man like kind of Liam Neeson-adjacent. I've come to realize my personality is very feminine, wanting to be chased, desired, needing my partner to be the assertive one, and I struggle to imagine myself in a relationship with people I'm actually attracted to without me needing to lapse into the "guy" role. It sucks. I've struggled with comphet too because of that, even though I'm basically really turned off by masc energy.

It's extra confusing too because I am rarely but legitimately attracted to guys who have a certain beauty or aesthetic quality and a more sensitive or feminine personality. And it's perplexing sometimes to be super turned off by 95% of men but totally up for that last 5%.

But then I get in a weird headspace of feeling like I should give up on dating women because I'd rather be in a relationship that makes me feel more like the woman I am even if I'm not that physically attracted to the person. It's total impostor syndrome, feeling inadequate, not good enough to call myself a woman next to someone who is much prettier than I am, even though that's who I want to be with. And feeling so miserable and defeated and emotionally numb at the thought of being in another relationship while trying to pretend to be a man or something more masc-adjacent.

So yeah, that sums it up. /vent over

Honestly, all things considered, I'm hanging in there pretty well. I just needed a space to share this and seek solidarity outside of therapy. 😂

For anyone who made it this far, thanks for reading!