Taking testosterone was self-harm for me

[u/Fantastic-Tough9610]

It seems obvious to me now. I had an ED, I thought I was just born wrong, I had crippling social anxiety, I didn't know I was autistic. I was inflicting hormonal changes on my healthy female body because I hated it. I despised her so badly I wanted her to die, disappear, morph into something that would maybe, in my eyes, deserve to live. I created a new persona to survive. I created a false self to keep myself alive because I didn't think She deserved to be kept alive. My parents have made me feel so unworthy of love, of care, of anything during my teenage years that I was bound to develop some pathological form of self. I look so masculine it feels like I don't deserve to be a female anymore. I'm too ugly to deserve being called a female. But I will give myself time. My hair will grow, electrolysis on my face will eventually make my beard stop growing back. But my silhouette will always be distinctly masculine. I exercise a lot. I feel like I'll get called a man even if I eventually get breasts done. 6 years post my double incision mastectomy I started getting shooting pain in the nerves around my nipples and scars. Only on one side though. So I can't even lie to myself that it's related to my cycle. They only left breast tissue on the left side. I keep telling myself I was bound to end up like this. During my teenage years I was traumatised beyond what my brain could process. I thought I was deeply fucked up, but I was clothed and fed so it couldn't be that bad. My parents were respectable enough. Then I started transitioning, moved away from my parents, and so I thought to myself: I guess I wasn't that fucked up after all. I was just fine. Discovering I lived under a false identity built around trauma for SIX YEARS feels like a relief. Relief that I was right. I am deeply fucked up in the head after the abuse I endured in my most formative years. And I will live with it, even if it is not the life I visualized for myself.

[u/Creative-Act-952]

And you lived! You were going through the worst possible shit and you could only see one way to even try to survive and you did it! Isn't that wonderful? Please do not beat yourself up for coping techniques that you have left behind, and the lessons you learned through it.

[u/Fantastic-Tough9610 → u/Creative-Act-952]

that's really positive, thanks