Up until recently, I never really thought that I experienced gender dysphoria.

I mean, I’ve never really liked my breasts, and I frequently complain about the size of them, but… isn’t that something ciswomen with large breasts do? And of course I don’t like my cycle, what ciswoman does, right? But, once I came to terms with myself as transmasculine, all of those complaints suddenly had a weight to them I couldn’t deny. I couldn’t shove them off any more; they stuck.

So now I find myself in situations where I am even more genuinely uncomfortable with myself than I used to be. I present feminine at work, and there are days where I take off my bra and put on a binder the minute I get home because of that dysphoria. I look down and see my breasts and just get this wave of a “this isn’t right” feeling. My bras are far more uncomfortable than they used to be, and I find myself getting even more on edge during my cycle. The times the dysphoria really gets to me, though, is while I’m presenting masculine.

You see… I don’t pass. Very rarely does anyone ever look at me and think I’m male. Even with my chest binder, even wearing men’s clothes, I don’t pass. Even so, when I go out in public on my weekends, I do my best to present masculine. I even wear buttons on my jacket which have my pronouns on them. But, more often than not, when dealing with strangers in public (cashiers, sales people, etc.) I get called “miss” or “ma’am”. Once, someone even called me “lady”. I know these people are trying to be polite, and most customer service training doesn’t cover people like me, but it still stings. I want people to read me as masculine, and they just don’t.

The absolute worst, though, is when I get hit on.

I’ve never been a fan of strange men (and, yes, it has always been men) hitting on me before they even know my name. It’s even worse now, though, because it makes it so blatantly obvious that I don’t pass. I am sure that there may be some people who might respond to this with, “Maybe they’re into guys!” While that is a potentially valid response, I don’t think it would be in this case. This type of getting hit on is very… condescending. It’s… a guy coming up beside you at the bar and putting his arm around you to ask you what you’re drinking. It’s a guy refusing to acknowledge that you’re trying your best to ignore him. It’s a guy cornering you just after you’ve exited the restroom so he can talk to you.

Maybe queer men deal with this, too. I honestly don’t know. But, to me, it feels exactly like it always has. A straight guy deciding that I need to pay him some kind of attention because he is interested in me. When I am presenting masculine, it is one of the worst things that can happen to me. It can ruin evenings for me. It reminds me that no one actually, really and truly sees me as I am. And it reminds me that it took me so long to realize who I am and who I should be. It makes me realize how far I still have to go to make myself look like I should. How much time needs to go into this, how much money, the hormones, the surgery. It’s difficult to be patient.

Once you realize something about yourself, about who you are fundamentally, it’s difficult to walk through your life without being that person.

You want to run to that finish line. You want people to start seeing you for who you are right now. It’s scary, too, though. You don’t really know who will stand beside you. You have to think — really, really think… am I willing to lose people over this? Am I willing to lose family over this? Because that is a very real possibility, unfortunately. Maybe it’s worth it, maybe it isn’t.

I’m fortunate enough to have some very caring and accepting people in my life. I’m out to most of my friends, and everyone in my closest circle have been nothing but supportive. They’re making everything a little less difficult, right now. They help to validate me. When I’ve been misgendered, they offer me support. When I put pictures of myself up online, they validate me as a masculine person. They call me by my name and use my pronouns, and they make me feel real. The dysphoria lessens, and I feel like I’m on the right track. I’m becoming the man I should be, and others are beginning to recognize it.