@420f26f4 what hope do you have? you are gonna find out 🥰. The worst and best part of transitioning is that we all do it anyway. Cause nobody ALWAYS feels like it’s working but we all do it anyway. in time, hopefully, those negative feelings are less frequent. To me, getting hot isn’t the goal, being myself is. So when I see a hot lady feel bad, that has nothing to do with my journey to be me. I can relate to them but I try not to see them as proof of concept. They don’t owe me happiness for me to have faith in myself.

A note: given that you have some truly gorgeous trans women reading this, I’m not sure what those hypothetical women are supposed to feel about your post. People feel what they feel. It’s hard enough to let yourself feel something without feeling responsible for how that makes someone else feel. 

 @420f26f4 but that works both ways, right? You can feel whatever you want here. But I just wanna check in cause I wanna avoid flattening people out to “hot = success = always happy” 

 @c624b71a Oh yeah, to be clear, I could end up ugly AF and be ok with it. At worst it'd be a lateral move. LOL When I say hope it's about being seen as a woman, not being seen at hot.  Worry not though, I'm soldiering on regardless because failure isn't an option.  😊 

 @420f26f4 

For me it really underscores how The Quest to Acheive Pretty is fundamentally a different thing than addressing and resolving dysphoria. 

And it’s HARD to really distinguish those two at the start of the process. Cause egg brain often says “want to be girl, girls pretty, therefore want to be pretty.”

You’ve kind of got to get a good ways in before you really internalize how not every pretty possibility aligns with your particular femininity. 

@c624b71a 

 @3a6d7ce0 @c624b71a 

Yeah that makes sense as well. It's hard to  not think "Oh well pretty equals woman" because I'm socially conditioned to that. 

Do I want to be pretty? FFS, yes of course I do! I even see it as possible. Maybe. One day. If I squint hard enough. Is that the goal? No, I know that too. Knowing it and feeling it though aren't always the same thing.