I detransitioned after coming out – but not for the reason you’d expect

The journey of coming out as transgender is so often portrayed as a straight line when it’s anything but.

For me, it’s been a squiggly path that meant, in June of this year, I had to go backwards in order to find a new way forward.

Detransitioning, which typically involves reverting socially and medically to your gender assigned at birth, has been a vital part of my trans journey.

It’s given me a safer space to do the mental and emotional work I know I need to live authentically – work that I wouldn’t have realised I needed without coming out the first time around.

There was no specific moment that contributed to my decision to detransition. It was the accumulation of several different internal and external factors that backed me into a corner.

Despite a general awareness of my transness since I was a kid – and admitting it to myself at 18 – I didn’t fully come out to friends, family, and work colleagues until last year, aged 31.

I’d already begun my social transition at that point. I’d been wearing women’s clothes and accessories and growing my hair out for four years.

The days immediately following my coming out were jubilant, a dizzy whirlwind of relief and possibility.

Family I thought would shun me embraced me with open arms, telling me they weren’t surprised, that they would always love me. I had already joined a private healthcare provider, and a few months after coming out, I started HRT.

The high couldn’t last and reality was quick to set in

This hormone regime involved applying oestrogen gel every day and taking an antiandrogen to block my body absorbing testosterone. I’ll never be able to reverse the male puberty I went through, but hormones offered me agency over my own body, aligning it closer to how I feel inside.

HRT had a profound effect on my mind. I felt emotional and mentally myself for the first time ever.

But the high couldn’t last and reality was quick to set in.

One incident, last April, lingers in my mind.

I was in the women’s bathroom, and a cis woman shot me such a dirty, irate look that I felt totally exposed by, like an intruder.

It was clear she didn’t think I belonged there – and, holding back tears, I realised she had made me feel that way, too.

Acceptance isn’t enough – not if the one who can’t accept you is you.

Incidents like the one in the bathroom chipped away any self-worth I had left

Each smirk or stare I caught from strangers, each comment at my expense, became magnified tenfold in the echo chamber of my mind.

I felt like I had become a joke to others wherever I went – and I lacked the internal fortitude needed to overcome it.

Incidents like the one in the bathroom chipped away any self-worth I had left, leaving me slipping deeper into depression.

I lived in quite a remote area, which meant I didn’t have an offline trans community beyond my partner. With anxiety and internalised transphobia rising within me, I was struggling, trying to hold on in hope that I could exist on my own terms.

But then, in June, I experienced an unavoidable disruption to my HRT (after my private GP ghosted me) and I was forced to medically detransition. 

I knew then what I had to do. I began to present once again as male.

In the first week, to try and numb the pain, I did as much as I could to distance myself from my trans identity. 

I tried to find the silver lining in my decision, and soon, I saw a pathway forwards

I cut my hair short, I packed up my entire wardrobe, and bought new men’s clothes. I changed my body language, my vocal patterns and developed a façade to help me navigate my male identity. A UK-wide lack of HRT and rising transphobia meant that I assumed it would be years before I could come out again as trans.

But I tried to find the silver lining in my decision, and soon, I saw a pathway forwards.

I knew I’d lacked what I needed to survive as an openly trans person.

Clarity came one night when I heard myself talking, felt the way I moved, and realised I was becoming a stranger to myself, pretending to be a person I didn’t want to be.

I needed to develop pride and take steps to confront and remedy my emotional struggles. I began to keep a diary and meditate, and to actively work on my fear responses and internalised shame.

Crucially, I knew I also needed to build community. As well as throwing myself headfirst into online groups, I started going to a meet up for local trans women. I even attended my first Pride event recently. 

I think of myself now as half in, half out of the closet

To be surrounded and welcomed by so many other trans people has been so empowering, and this is only the beginning!

It’s now been over two months since my decision to detransition and I’ve already made so much more progress than I expected.

I think of myself now as half in, half out of the closet.

Although I’ve asked my family to use my true name, I’m known exclusively once more by my birth name in my professional life.

But I make no secret of my transness. I’m trying to own it.

Weeks after packing them up, I’ve started wearing plenty of women’s clothes again – and still attracting insults, smirks, stares and all the rest. Now, however, I can feel my pride and resilience growing by the day.

In fact, I’m booked in to have the trans symbol tattooed on my body. It’ll serve as a literal mark of the love I have for myself and the community I’m starting to surround myself with.

I’ve also started HRT again months after being forced to stop. Desperately trying to get my hormones through my local NHS GP paid off after they agreed, out of the blue, to prescribe them to me. I cried and couldn’t stop grinning at this gift fate saw fit to give me.

Now I can let my body re-emerge behind closed doors, without feeling as though I’m alone on a stage, and let my mind rebalance itself.

No one’s journey is a straight line – especially when you’re trans. I was as guilty as anyone of assuming I had a linear road ahead.

Detransition wasn’t at all the journey I expected to take, but I know it’s the one I needed.

I am trans. I will always be trans.

And once I’m ready, I’ll come back in my entirety to live my best life, on my own terms.

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