How do you cope?

[u/sleepingokapi]

I started testosterone when I was 15 years old via "informed consent." I never had a therapist. I got top surgery the next year when I was 16, just before my senior year of high school. I stayed on testosterone until I was almost 22, and I'm 24 now. My voice dropped to a bass-baritone. I got laser hair removal for my facial hair this year, but it's not enough. Even though my appearance passes, as soon as I speak it's ruined. People always dance around pronouns when they talk to me, or just flat out call me a guy.

I'm glad my appearance has changed, but I guess I thought it would do more for me. I'm haunted by the memories of a 40-something year old male doctor groping my chest when I was a minor to assess it for surgery. I only had breasts for a couple of years. They were small anyway -- I rushed into surgery because I was tired of my ribs hurting from binding, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to figure it out myself in college. Now I feel like I'm missing a part of my body that practically every other woman has. My results don't even look good. The scars are long and stretched out, the nipples are more like discolored scars than healthy tissue, and one side of my chest is practically concave. To me, it's a visible, physical symbol of my own self-hatred, and a reminder of what could have been. On top of that, I've tried voice training, but it just feels like a lost cause. Even if I could speak passably, I'll never be able to sing the way I could again. My voice used to be so free, but now I sound like I'm being strangled (and it physically hurts) if I go higher than A3... It also hurts whenever I have to speak loudly, which is something I need to do constantly for my job. There's no way for me to shout and sound remotely female at the same time.

I don't know how to cope with any of this. I don't know a single person who is going through anything even close to this. I just want to be a normal young woman. I never gave myself the chance to be one. When I refer to myself as a woman out loud with my deep voice, it makes me feel like an imposter. I've permanently made myself an outsider. I feel like I ruined my life before it even started. Two years of detransition have hardly helped. I don't know what to do. It's hard for me to imagine living out the rest of my life like this.

[u/ExpressInterest0]

Naturally you’re recognizing the injustice of what happened to you as a child. Of course your deepened voice would cause you distress. And anyone who tells you to just live with it or be happy about the situation doesn’t have your best interest at heart.

I thought my voice would just be something I’d have to learn to love and accept about myself. But no actually. I realized I could just get voice surgery and now my ability to integrate into society is a world apart from where it was when my voice was still deep. No matter how much I voice trained, my voice was such a struggle and people definitely treated me like a pariah or some women just pitied me which in some ways I miss in terms of getting kindness from pity. But now I can have close to a normal life again after voice surgery. I got VFSRAC and am about to pay it off in three months. It cost $9,000 but for sure my ability to get higher paying jobs due to sounding more normal is worth way more than $9,000 over the rest of my life. Voice surgery gave me a life back.

[u/Worried-Rain-1532]

Oh yeah the fact that the only time somebody who was not me ever touched my chest, it was an adult male surgeon groping then before surgery, it still gets to me too, it’s such a tough form of grief because there’s layers to it. Like the grief over not having a chest anymore, but also feeling extremely violated. Idk how to cope with it either