Will you look good if? The problem lies in that fact that you don't have a choice.

Long before I knew the word "transgender" or learned about hormones, I fought my own nature. Part of me strived to care about nothing and become a robot that only performs tasks, believing that pursuing what I "wanted" (read: needed) was impossible, vain, and destructive, and that it wasn't my place to ever be happy. My family struggled with poverty, obesity, so many things, and after years of only ever knowing depression, I had little trouble believing that since I myself could never be happy or enjoy anything life had to offer, it meant my role was to support others and enable people who were actually capable of being happy and actually wanted to live to achieve their goals, and then I'd get to die having served a purpose.

But I haven't been terribly useful to others. To say the years were unkind to me mentally would be a grave understatement. Poisoning myself for years in an effort to avoid becoming "big and strong" (I ended up 5'10" and can't stand up for very long these days), attempted burning off my facial hair with a lighter at some point early in my shaving career when I realized I couldn't shave close enough to not have facial hair (luckily I did no permanent damage), and I think a lot of my mental problems such as memory, comprehension, focus, and balance stem from all the years of violently bashing my head against things to get the thoughts out of my head so I could sleep.

There was no help and support growing up, at all. Not one homework assignment did I ever get help with. But I had no difficulty in finding discipline for my failures. I never had sex education at all. I believed differences between boys and girls were just forced on people, and if I didn't work out or anything, if I took care of myself and my appearance, I'd look like a girl. After all, people would call me a girl as an insult, and I was forced to get my hair cut because it "made me look like a girl". Once I turned 18 and moved away, I could look like a girl and nobody would know I wasn't.

But of course, all of that was remarkably naive. I had little exposure to adults, much less other kids, and knew nothing at all of puberty. When I started to notice an adam's apple, I thought I was getting some kind of sore throat. Financial worries were bad enough without needing to go to the hospital, so I said nothing. I tied a sock around my neck as tight as I could whenever I was alone for days. Which turned into weeks. Which turned into years before I knew it.

And it wasn't fair. I was still young, I was still a kid. I wasn't supposed to be some hairy old dude until I was older. What happened to getting to live life as a girl? All the torturous things I put myself through, and slowly but surely I drifted further and further away from passing as female, while girls, they never have to go through the hell of sleeping at night and feeling all that hair on their face, their voice becoming disgusting... I reached a point I could not look at girls without the hatred, the envy, just... I isolated myself now. For the good of myself and others. I was no longer in control anymore, no longer stable, unable to calm myself, the rage overpowered even the lethargy that depression brought.

I look back and I think, with the proper education and the proper upbringing, I could have lived an actual life. Instead, it's full of endless insomnia, horror, sadness, anger, regret. Now I know of medicines, role models, human biology, all sorts of things I shouldn't have been allowed to be ignorant of when I needed it most.

You knew of these things at 13. I knew of them at 25, and didn't understand that you could even do anything after childhood until I was 29. I thought I missed the boat completely, and it left me so bitter and angry I couldn't even bring myself to read more into the subject, and then I kept hearing more and more things about transgender people.

And here I am now. I had been planning my suicide at thirty since I was twenty-five. I had heard that people who are serious should wait a week to make sure they aren't being rash. I decided if after five years if I was still just as miserable (and I ended up being way more miserable), it would be a permanent solution to a permanent problem. My life was bleak, no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope, nothing to look forward to in the slightest, and eager to get to die. And then life decides to finally throw answers at me; a society and media that is becoming more open, educated and accepting than the hell I grew up in, medicine even I can afford, and role models around my own age and height who give me some hope that maybe I can be that person I wanted to be before I gave up, that I can be an actual person, go outside and do things one day, live a life, and not have to feel that horrible, stomach-twisting pain of having to be a guy.

Even spending the majority of my life ignorant of any answers, ignorant of the idea that I could be anything other than sick and disturbed, believing that my puberty was perhaps mentally delayed and that hopefully I'll grow up and come to terms with being a guy by the time I'm thirty, only to learn at twenty nine that there are people like me who live to seventy and, nope, there isn't some magic thing in your brain that changes, ever, it doesn't work that way. None of my ignorance stood in the way of my nature being what it is. I am transgender, and I know now that that is what it is called and that it is not a phase, not something I will simply outgrow, and that it is normal, acceptable, treatable, and the world has become a place where perhaps I won't be shot for it, and if I am, it's not my fault.

If you are transgender, and from what you have said that certainly seems to be the case, then there aren't any ifs. There are wills. You will suffer until you are thirty. You will suffer until you are seventy. There are people who can tell you this from personal experience. That's how this works.

You hope for the best, but you work to make things better. Let me tell you, I've been on hormones for three months. I'm not one of those types who post monthly comparisons, or even three months. I still have most of my facial hair and have noticed no difference in my appearance.

But I feel better, rather than worse or the same. I can't tell you how much of it is the hormones themselves, or just the weight off my shoulders from the fact that I'm inching closer to my goals rather than further. But I have no regrets, second thoughts, or reservations about starting the medicine anymore. On the contrary, while I'm still incredibly somber about the prospect of having to take medicine every day for the rest of my life, going back to how things were is simply not an option.

Before I was on this medication, my rage was so much harder to control. It's still hard to control, but it's more like it was when I was younger. And my sex drive, at first, I just lost the ability to do anything about it and it was absolutely maddening, but eventually, it turned into something more normal than it's ever been. I used to be at it multiple times a day, and it was incredibly distracting. Unlike some stories I have read, achieving orgasm hasn't changed at all for me, at least not yet, but it's milder and I can go days at a time without that sort of stuff even crossing my mind.

Where once I was a slave to it and thought I'd never be normal, I've adjusted to the changes and I am way better off as a person just having my libido lowered like that. And it's become more clear to me that I'm not just some pervert, that behind all of this isn't just some fetish. Even without my mind clouded with all of that, masculinity still disgusts and horrifies me.

For the first time since childhood, my mind is so much more free. It is still not a great situation. I'm worried all the poison and physical trauma I inflicted in my youth have ensured I'll never be where I once was, but I'm actually able to sit there and work on something for hours without my libido just screaming louder than I can ignore, and I no longer have those worries that all of my thoughts about wanting to be a woman are merely a product of my sex drive, and it is more clear than when I started that I am in fact transgender.

If you are MtF transgender, then testosterone absolutely sucks, and whether you pass or not (and from what you've said, it doesn't sound like you have much reason to give up hope), you'll be a hell of a lot better off replacing that hormone. Just try and focus on managing that for now.

I keep my head straight by looking at things like /r/transtimelines from time to time. People around my age, my height, several of them passing, several of them being good looking. Celebrities and internet famous transitioners like Lana Wachowski, Sona Avedian, Carmen Carrera, Jamie Clayton... you want to feel short? Look up Erika Ervin. She's 6'8" and being more than half a foot taller than you has done less than you might expect to prevent her from passing, much less transitioning.

I remind myself of ciswomen celebrities around my height like Lucy Lawless, Uma Thurman, and Katie Holmes, I look at ffs pictures, I look at FtM timelines, I went through months of laser and now I'm doing electrolysis, I look at pictures of cis-women with broader shoulders than me. It might take time and it might even take surgery, but you're probably not as far outside the realm of passing as you think.

You can check out mybodygallery.com. Plenty of women with body image issues. There are countless women on that site who are 6'0".

There are women of all shapes and sizes out there. It doesn't seem like that sometimes. I hear about men taller than 6' all the time, and FtM's complain about being 5'8" 'manlets', but when I go outside most of the guys are that height at best, they make me feel like Lurch, and the girls hover around 5' tall.

Just hang in there.