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The original was posted on /r/truscum by /u/Ok_Egg_5922 on 2025-09-03 03:42:11+00:00.

I’m not sure this is the appropriate outlet, but I feel like of all the various trans groups, you all would “get it.”

As a kid, I wanted to be a girl. So, so badly, I wanted to be a girl. I’d pray every night that I’d magically wake up as a girl. As I got older, I just assumed it was impossible. And then, suddenly, as I snuck to watch MTV one day while I parents were out, I saw a trans woman for the first time on Real World. I would sneak around on the internet after that and find more about transgenderism and transition. My house was absolutely not open to the idea, so it stayed my secret. And when I went to college, I got as far as entering the number for a therapist in my phone several times, but never called. It started to go mainstream, and became a subject of ridicule as obvious fetishists became the public face of trans people. Ultimately, the thought of the social isolation it would cause, as well as the disgust towards how openly this was a fetish to the most visible people who used the label, made me…chicken out, I suppose.

I’m now married and have kids. I’m sadly both bald and woolier than a sheep. I know full well that deep down, I’m just repressing it. I just won’t ever transition, though, because it would be so apocalyptically bad for my family. I have kind of painted myself in a weird corner, because even though I have that deep, discordant feeling that something is wrong, even though I hate mirrors and pictures and wish the random chance of birth had been different, I actually love my life. I love everything about my life, down to the last detail, except for who I am within it. But to even attempt to fix that piece would mean tearing apart the rest, with terrible consequences for the people I care about most.

It’s weird. I love my life, like I said. But had that “Stefonknee” or whatever guy who claimed he was actually an 8 year old girl not been in the news at the time, and had trans stuff remained an incredibly niche subject known only to actual trans people, I very well might have transitioned. I was so, so close to doing it when those kinds of stories started making the rounds, and my parents heard about this stuff for the first time. That specific one came up somehow in a conversation somehow and they obviously (and rightly) reacted with total disgust, and that was that. And if I had transitioned, I wouldn’t have this life that I love. I wouldn’t have my kids, or my wife.

I can’t help but silently mourn the path not taken from time to time, but I also feel guilty for it since objectively, every other part of my life is wonderful. I’m just weirdly self-aware that I’d be just as happy as I am as a husband and father if I instead were a wife and mother, living with a husband and having adopted/step-children. I loved many parts of being a teenage boy, like the sports and the hijinks. But I would’ve also loved doing those things as a girl who actually liked herself, too, and not just the activities or people around her. I think deep down, I’m a person with dysphoria who, above all else, wants to be “normal.” And when transitioning got made so visible by all the wrong people, it derailed any chance of normality down that path. At least for me, in my world at the time. And so I went down the path of least resistance towards normality.

I have no real point to any of this. I do wonder how many of you may have been at a similar crossroad but took the path I didn’t. I know the subject of having children is a sore one for lots of trans women. It’s wound up being a strange bargain, and I made the side of the deal most of you didn’t. I wouldn’t consider trading my choice for my own bodily happiness for even a moment, but at the same time, I wish that I wasn’t born having to make that choice in the first place. If the mystical “magic button” appeared, I’d press it without a moment’s hesitation. But the real, actual process is simply not something I can or will do now.

I do feel a lot of sympathy for transwomen who just want to live a normal life, but got forced into the spotlight in recent years. I know had things been a little different, that would’ve been a major problem for me. To this day, I feel an anger towards the “tucute” types because in a way, even though it worked out for me in a way I wouldn’t undo, I resent not feeling like I really had a choice in the matter. Even if I actually did, and it was just me in my own head saying I didn’t have a choice.

I guess I just want to say cheers from the path not taken. I wish you all happy, joyful lives.