r/lgbt•
CaptainWestGold

Am I trans or just different?

Hello, posted this on different subreddits and got only one answer and I would really like to get your opinion on this situation.

For context, I am 19 year old amab in Bulgaria in a relatively small town. I wasn't paying that much attention to gender until maybe 5th grade. I was mostly bullied by the boys for my size but I made good friends with 3 people out of my whole class. During middle school and even way into high school, I couldn't relate to the other boys in my class, most of them were loud, rude, hyperactive or all of the above. I was not interested in sports, cars, guns or military or anything my country considers masculine. This was the reason I briefly thought myself as a demiboy in 7th grade and dismissing the idea because it felt weird. Hell, even longer hair especially in my town, unless you are tall, having long hair is not considered masculine and I was even made fun of for growing my hair out during my last years at high school.

Another thing is I have an older sister, and due to my father almost teaching me nothing except to be calm and collected, my mother was teaching me most things about life or I was left to learn them for myself. My sister had a lot of friends, and sometimes I was there to hang out with them and even then it was easier for me to connect with her female friends than with the guys except for that one gay dude. Weirdly enough, I find it easier to speak with LGBTQ people than straight ones. A lot of them even sharing common interest with me like video games, music, jokes or ways of thinking.

This whole questioning whether I am trans or not started from this one yt video about the life or a MTF before transitioning. And I kid you not, she literally described my life and way of thinking. And I mean word for word of thoughts I have had before, which felt incredibly surreal and really just jumpstarted my questioning. Before this, such questions about my gender were but mere afterthoughts that I would pay no attention to but now I have started really paying attention to them. I started shaving my legs and arms recently and it felt freeing. Like expressing myself more feminine than masculine feels more... natural ig?

Unfortunately I live in Bulgaria and specifically one of the dullest and most conservative parts of the country. I do not know if these thoughts are actually real or it is my indoctrination just stopping me. You know how you were raised on certain ideals but when you grow older you become confused when you have the opposite of those ideals. I will bring up the demiboy situation at 7th grade again. I dismissed it because I thought "Oh maybe I am just a confused, I am probably not a demiboy" because that was what I was raised on. But now I am thinking if I truly was a demiboy but due to being raised in a conservative part country I simply dismissed it as being confused.

Another thing to add is that I just feel like being a man is too limiting for me. Here in bulgaria, I just see women express themselves in so many ways and styles ( like hair, clothing and make up), while men are forced to wear jeans and a shirt and if you dare to dress or be a little bit more eccentric in your appearance, you get weird looks. Whenever I go in the mall for clothes- I always like the women's section more than the dull male one. Also I insinuated the idea of being trans to my mother and she was heavily against it, no need to ask my father who is waayy more conservative.

Yesterday (25.07) I did a 2 column list, signs that I might be trans/genderqueer and signs that might be cis, anything that came to mind- The list came to about 13 signs of the first and only 2 of the latter. And to test out something, I bought an eyeliner today secretly and once I put it on there was this weird sensation, something akin to liking it but also feeling it as wrong (maybe due to my eyeliner job being shit lol). The idea of wearing women's clothes is still somewhat weird to me and might require further testing.

And so, this leaves me to this question of whether I am just different or maybe trans or maybe neither.

Posted Jul 26, 2026, 11:39 PM UTC

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