Edit: this is thankfully not my IUD.

Still go get your IUD changed, if you're using a Ballerine IUD though!

Also, if you weren't aware, you can get pregnant on T! Be safe out there!

https://nltimes.nl/2025/03/17/100-women-got-pregnant-ballerine-iud-health-min-advises-getting-alternative

This post basically has a purpose to remind you that the road of figuring out transness isn't always that straightforward.

Compared to how it's usually shown in various media, my realization wasn't so clear. In fact, for quite some time, I was kinda okay with being a woman. Okay in a "I just feel neutral about myself" way. Then, in a "I just feel indifferent to myself" way. You know what happens next.

It takes a while to realize that something is wrong when your dysphoria isn't acute right away, but slowly crawls towards you instead. I felt really fine as a child, but heading towards teenage years at some point I felt completely empty, like my life had no purpose. I felt like a sad sack of potatoes just wandering around and fulfilling basic needs to survive and not caring about how it looked like.

In 4th grade there was a drama club and in one performance I had to perform a male role. It was fun, I didn't mind it. Unfortunately, it didn't contribute to the journey at all.

When I was 13, however... I was role-playing with my ex friend and I always have chosen male characters, and through that I realized that to be referred as he sounds better than as she. But I also didn't think anything of it, because at least in Russia it was common for girls online to use he/him pronouns for various reasons. So I just went with it.

Year after there was a time when I played on some toxic minecraft server and just as an experiment I avoided saying right away my gender and pronouns and was satisfied when people in that server referred to me as a guy. One day, however, I decided to become a helper of said server and I had to reveal my "real" name in a form. This led to unfortunate events (misogyny) and overall I was sad that after that people referred to me as a woman and woman only.

You see, at the same period of time I learned more about the concept of transness and thought that I might be agender because I "didn't care". I didn't think of transitioning at all, I didn't correct people when they referred to me wrongly, I just got to the point when I felt like I have no other opportunities and was very unsure of everything. I actually was afraid of asserting my own preferences and goals.

This behavior pattern doesn't get out of nowhere. I'm not going to write out details of what has been happening to me in my parents house, both because my memory isn't reliable and because I just don't want to, but there's one thing that contributed to my indecisiveness – my parents, mom in particular, wanted me to achieve her goals. She loves not me, but her idea of me. This caused me years of not knowing what I really want, because the second I tried something that I might like, finding clothes I want to wear, for example, my mom declined that, said that it won't suit me. Even with conforming enough items. When I figured I like suits (which was pretty early, when I was 12, by the way), I had to seek compromises until the very end of school (remember that, will elaborate soon).

So I was left with not really knowing what is going on with me, why I felt that everything is bleak and not worth living, why I got to the point of constant depersonalization episodes, unless I found friends that are now my family. This is the point where hateful people will look at this and say that I was manipulated by them, that I'm just confused or something. But they didn't force any gender identities on me, they just gave me enough confidence to think about that. If anything, they relieved this confusion. My bro, a trans man, corrected my misconceptions of how things work, named me Mem because I was constantly sending memes in chat and as you can see I fucking love that name. If any of these people have forced on me identities, I wouldn't have gone through whole mental gymnastics to realize that yes, I'm a trans guy, nonbinary even. With their help I realized that I actually am dysphoric and unfortunately after that my dysphoria only grew, but at least I knew that I want to transition.

Getting back to the clothes, in the end of high school I got a pixie cut, and I decided to wear a bowtie with black blazer and pants and white shirt to school. I already wore the bowtie in 9th class when I had long hair, and my mother then supported my pixie haircut. But that day suddenly it was too "lesbian" to her and didn't really want me to wear it more than once. Very funny, I think. I continued to keep my hair short, and she started to imply that I looked better with longer hair. Long story short, she didn't really like where I'm going. For the first time, I started to express myself more explicitly, and she didn't like it. Thankfully, I moved out and now live with very dear people to me.

If you're questioning your gender and not sure if you're dysphoric enough to get any treatment, chances are you actually need it. When I moved out I still wasn't entirely sure of getting HRT, but once I got it then my dissociative episodes faded away (still complicated because I have another guy(s) in my head, but it certainly got better), I feel much more connected to myself. I recommend you to read this article [genderanalysis.net] about depersonalization and gender dysphoria by Zinnia Jones, which explains this phenomenon in detail with examples, so you'll be aware of covert dysphoria symptoms that are actually very common in trans folks.