Hi all, Sorry this is super long. Just reaching out to see if anyone has had a similar experience as me, as I feel I am going crazy atm. I am 29 years old, AMAB and started MtF HRT in 2015.

I guess when I first started exploring my gender identity around 25-26, I realised I had a lot of dysphoria around being male both socially and physically. At first I didn't even consider that I might be female, just not male in a traditional sense. I made changes to become more of a feminine/androgynous guy, sort of inspired by Bishounen anime character or the gender ambiguous Kpop/Jpop dudes in asian cultures. I wanted to look like a girl, almost to the stage of passing as one, be pretty and cute instead of handsome and masculine and be afforded alot of the social flexibilities that girls have over guys (around clothing etc.)

After making alot of non HRT changes (growing hair out, lasering facial hair, wearing makeup, dressing androgynously), people started to gender me as female on occasions. People referred to me as "she" or "ladies" when I was out with friends, held doors open for me etc. and tbh it made me feel really warm and fuzzy inside. I had started dating guys for the first time (I'm bi) and had my first boyfriend and when I was with him, I kind of felt like his girlfriend. He kind of picked up on it I think and he treated me like I was the female in the relationship (in a traditional gender role sense), he was really protective of me and it felt really nice :)

To the rest of the people in my life, my sort of gender ambiguity was seen as something really unique. No one thought I was trans, but I would get comments from people at work how I was "bizarrely pretty for a guy". I would wear makeup (mostly eyeliner) and cute unisex girls clothes, my old friends picked up on the makeup and told me "it really suits you, for some reason".

With all the feelings I had around being gendered female and looking at transition timelines of trans women and the effects of HRT, I became drawn to the idea of transitioning to female. I wasn't really 100% certain, but alot of signs were pointing to a good possibility that I was MtF and I really wanted to take hormones to further feminize myself. I went through the usual counselling and medical process to get HRT. My counsellor and I were fairly convinced I was female and would be happier making the transition. I started HRT and came out to my friends/family/work, which went surprisingly well, the majority of people were supportive and willing to work with me around pronouns, new name, bathrooms etc.

So I was on HRT and lived as a female full time for about a year. Overall I enjoyed the physical changes and being gendered female. The feelings of being on hormones made me feel alot more calmer and a bit warm and fuzzy. Howeve, my external life had become alot more awkward. I became a lot less confident in myself and became more negative about my body image, I put so much focus and energy and fear on passing. I went from being a fairly outgoing person to a bit of recluse, I wouldn't go out as much in public for fear of people staring at me and for someone who was previously extroverted and chatty, I stopped talking to people because I felt my voice was too deep. I also didn't know who I was anymore, I was trying so hard to bury my old male self but at the same time felt like I lost my familiar base, I didn't know how to be a woman. Life would fluctuate between feeling happy about obtaining my girl self, but for the most part just stressful and scary.

Overtime the initial coming out excitement wore off, I burn't out, spiraled into a pretty bad depression and ended up in hospital. What helped me recover was realising that I actually missed my old guy self, not the old old "trying to fit in as a man" guy self, but the pre-coming out androgynous/bishounen/girly guy self. By putting in so much energy to suppress that part of me to gain acceptance as a female as well as living in an almost non-genuine way to change into some kind of self perceived stereotype of a female, I was causing myself almost a reverse dysphoria. I also began to wonder whether transition was a mistake.

Anyway I stopped HRT, decided I wanted to detransition and went back to dressing as a guy (confusing a lot of people in the process). I felt relieved to let go of the pressure of passing, just rolled out of bed in the morning and throw on jeans and a tshirt, I could speak to people again because...who cares about my voice. My confidence began to come back. My friends continued to treat me as a female and use she/her pronouns and all of that still made me feel nice. After being off HRT for a while I began to feel anxiety, mostly around re-masculinizing and aging as a male (losing my hair, soft features and skin etc.). I hated when my male sex drive kicked in and overall i felt gross in my body. My desires around wanting to be perceived as female also started to return. So I went back on HRT and kind of switched between a boy and a girl mode depending on how confident I felt and what I felt like wearing day-to-day.

After a while my breasts began to grow, not huge (like an A cup), but big enough to be noticeable. I couldnt wear tight shirts and I certainly felt naked when I was topless (which sucked because I grew up on the beach and loved surfing without a shirt). Tbh I hate having breasts most of the time, they feel like really alien and I feel unattractive and awkward having them. I bind them using a tight sports bra most of the time. There are occasions when I do like them, when I'm feeling deeply female and I'm wearing a dress or top that needs filling out, also when I'm at home in my pjs I feel really cute. The biggest time I enjoy them is during sex, the sensations feel amazing and when I'm with a partner I feel like the female in bed. I've never enjoyed sex when I felt like a male. So over the last year I've cycled on and off hormones. I go off them usually because the breast growth freaks me out and then back on them when the anxiety, "gross in my body", "fear of masculine features returning" feelings come back. Right atm I am living as my bishounen guy self the majority of the time and bind my chest, I even cut my hair mid length into a cute androgynous style, which has made me feel alot happier. I still have many days or longer periods of time where I really girl up and am happy being seen as female. I am really unsure what to do going from here, whether to go back on HRT forever or stay off them, I'm worried the cycling I'm doing will cause me health problems long term and my endo isn't experienced with someone doing that. My breasts still worry me, I've done some research on top surgery recently and I would be eligible for keyhole because they arn't very big. At the same time I wonder if I would regret having them removed sometimes.

The only other thing that bothers me is that I feel I lost something that was unique to me when I came out as transgender, which I can never get back. I truly miss being that ambiguous guy who was bending all the gender rules, now I feel my unique identity has been taken off me in some way and placed under the transgender label. I don't mean that in a negative way, but that could be partly some internalized transphobia at play. I guess when I was exploring, people saw me as a quirky confident David Bowie type, I was messing with peoples heads and people saw me as one of a kind, "I don't know what's going on, but he is kind of cool". After I came out: "oh she's like Caitlyn Jenner" or "I saw a trans story on 60 minutes, you are so brave", "it must be so hard". If I could do it over, I would transition and switch genders without ever coming out and I think my friends would have gone along with that.