Oh yes. It just took awhile for my shell that had been broken and repaired to break again.
I started doing heroin at 14, knew I was trans at a young age but I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know what transitioning was until later on. At about 17.
See, when you are an underage addict who has already been more or less cut off from family and friends for any support because your lifestyle is incredibly toxic and made them just as sick as you, you turn to what makes you money the best to stay high the longest. Because that dope shuts everything up.
So I got into sex work. I was a kink oriented, underage sex worker with a heavy heroin habit. Money was everywhere for that. Hormones were everywhere. So at 17 I got shots and pellets. I had been presenting femme for some time at that point anyways and then I found hormones. And wow was that wonderful. At 17-19 I was transitioning, living day to day, fucking tricks and just having a grand time. But, of course, that sort of life has a short burn to it. I got clean at the Salvation Army at 19.
They told me that all these thoughts of wanting to be a girl were drug addled nonsense. They taught me that in order to stay clean I needed to do a lot of things. That society needed me to pretend quite often that I was happy, and in time I would be happy.
So I pretended. For about 4 years I was this caricature of a man. It's what all the people in my life told me to be. I pretended to be happy, pretended like things were always great- and in many cases they were. I have not used since I was 19. Not even drank or smoked weed. I have a great job. People look at me today and are envious of my life because I have my shit together better than most.
But I hated myself the whole time. I hated the bodybuilding phase, the modeling phase, the hippie phase, everything. None of it felt like me. I though everyone had a life which felt like a game that was basically going through the motions and lacked joy. At least, people who had done heroin would be that way.
But then I got back into kink. I started presenting femme. I started ordering shoes, catsuits, corsets, wigs, got great at makeup, looked on fucking point. I played with people who called me by feminine pronouns. I lost my muscle mass and gained flexibility. I became as femme as I could- but I could not be trans. That was for freaks.
By the time I turned 25- the day of actually- I said fuck it. My present to myself was to join the freaks and outcasts. Because I could not live another minute in this fake world I had created around myself. If I wasn't me, I would blow my brains out. So I got the hormones from the clinic in LA. I got them that day and came out a week later. I didn't give a fuck anymore what people thought of me, I was done living a lie. Ever since that day, there have been a thousand tough moments but I am forever grateful I just jumped in headfirst.