I never considered myself trans back in Türkiye because on media, we only saw non-passing ones or hyperfem ones.
Bülent Ersoy, Gaga Bulut, crossdressers being shown as trans women on TV series, and the one I saw in my city (they transitioned at age 30+ and I clocked her when I was a kid even though I didn’t know much about trans stuff back then)
I just wanted to be like a cis girl with female voice and appearance, and I thought this is impossible. I also searched online but due lack of my English back at age 15, I couldn’t find anything and I had to give up. I had a sui attempt, and after recovery I got traumatized and I promised myself to just ignore all of my issues.
I stopped studying, I stopped everything that I cared about, just watched TV shows (16-18 was covid), was planning to join French foreign legion so I did gymmaxxing, my social anxiety and everything got worse but I was repping so hard, I was even copying and pasting other men’s behaviours to myself to prevent being seen as fem. I was idolising some men I liked. It made me miserable asf.
(French Foreign Legion is extremely conservative, anti-science, and strictly anti-LGBT.)
If I didn’t move to Canada, and talked to a trans woman online, I would be dead due “depression”.
I repped with sertraline until age 18, and I thought it was just “OCD”… Erdoğan fucked my body and life and now I’m the one who has to pay for the damage?!
i’m actually kinda surprised how there’s not been 5 people yet commenting “oh you’re so young, you have your whole life in front of you, it’s not too late, starting at 18 is not too late, don’t give up” etc… well actually i understand your situation quite well. we think at every moment in our lives (especially when we’re young) that it’s one of the last moments we have. so we panic because we don’t have enough time to fix our mistakes ever. but that is a wise trick of nature to kick our butts and get us moving. better start doing things today because you’re running out of time. so get started with what you think is right to do.