Warn… typed this up and then couldn’t stop myself, it’s long but advice is appreciated (needed?..)
This can’t be real. After avoiding mirrors. Hating mirrors. Smashing one. Gosh I fucking hate reflections. After hating myself for so long (and still).
Now, I can’t push this aside like I would other problems. I just wanted to be a normal 18 year old. Round off the school year. Get college plans in place. Parties, hangouts, something like that. But now it’s different. Now I know I’m trans (fuck, I’ve never said that anywhere…), and I can’t push through things the same way anymore, although I'm now putting so much more effort in to try. I barely even had my shit together before, likely to some ADHD(/autism?? I don’t know..) that already felt like the biggest hurdle trying to grasp and get tested for (very little progress made on that front). Now I feel like I’ve been living a complete lie up to this point, and I’ll have to restart but on hard mode. I don’t know what to do. The people in my life are limited and I have a really hard time articulating my points, let alone my feelings, I don’t know who to talk to or ask for advice. I feel like walls are being pushed up against me.
My mom is really great and I love her so much, but it’s always hard to get a read on her since she’s busy and exhausted near constantly. She’s indifferent about queer people, and doesn’t really have a good understanding of them. She grew up in a conservative third-world country and is really prideful of her religion; I don’t think she’ll be receptive. Even just growing my hair out she’s made half-jokes of her having a son, not a daughter. My hair isn’t even that long yet, but I stopped cutting it a while ago before understanding why I wanted to see it longer.
My friends are… great. I’m aren’t worried about their opinions on me whenever I decide that I want to tell them, but now is a really bad time. I’m used to keeping up appearances for a long time even when I’m not doing well, so the sudden shift to the absolute mess I am internally right now is just too much. We have so little life experience, and we’re practically still kids. They don’t have the resources or capacity to deal with me as I am right now, and I’m not willing to put that burden on them.
For now I’ll look through objects, my work, and even people that are standing in front of me far more often now, even more than with my other undiagnosed issues, just struggling to keep this… machine… active. I will walk around and get my day done as I usually would but in such a disconnected state knowing that this flesh sack is an illusion I’m using to make everything look like it’s ok when I know I’m walking through a full scale production of lies. I’ll spend time with my friends silently begging they would stop repeating the name of a person that doesn’t exist. I’ll get home and make dinner for my brother who since he was a baby has always seen me as the best big "brother" in the world. I’ll go to my desk and (try to) get some work done wishing I at least had my own room to store stuff in for expressing myself in (not on purpose, this place is all we can afford). When I go to bed I can either listen to stuff on my earbuds to keep the feels at bay or cry anyway knowing there’s no room, time, or place in my life to be anything other than what the flesh on the outside appears to be. I’ll remember how I’ve realized who I am now at no worse possible time, where people like me are having their rights stripped and threats to be hurt and/or killed. And I’ll live that cycle over and over again. For how much longer? I don’t fucking know. But what’s a little longer when I’ve been doing it that way already… why do I have to be so fucked up…
I’m trying for any sort of advice, I know my circumstances aren’t helping and my thoughts are disconnected and rambly (as they usually are)… this is the first time I’ve ever really opened up about my (not just trans) feelings before to a place other than animals or random plushies (lmao..), and it's also quite late in the night for me, but I can try and explain some more stuff. I just have no vision on where I go from here other than really bad places…
they must be putting some different stuff in the water near me /j bc unfortunately I already have quite a bit of hair growth in all those places, my voice is deep, and I'm tall :(
I've already shaved some parts and that feels nice :3 but the voice thing is bothering me a lot...
yet my mindset has become so much better (!!) with all the support here... with that hair gone... I'm not giving up now, not when it feels this good ❤️
I'm so happy for the euphoria and hope you are feeling! This is a great mindset, and you are doing so well 💞
the good news is that you absolutely can train your voice to sound female ... the bad news is that it takes training 😅
Go ahead and start voice training now - it can be a very long process (in my mind, I would expect progress to happen over many months of continuous / serious / persistent effort).
Personally, I did not make much progress until I saw a speech language pathologist (SLP) who specialized in helping trans women with their voices. It took 8 months of once-a-week sessions and basically practicing every time I opened my mouth to finally "crack" it and find a passing voice, and then I "graduated" from seeing my SLP after 12 months of sessions. Here's an example of my voice from 11 months ago if you are curious (also, happy to accept any critical feedback).
I think this is do-able, I've seen people develop a passing voice in 6 months. This is rare, but I've even seen a woman "crack" it and produce a passing voice within her first week of training. So it varies from person to person. Many of us practice for years and don't make much progress. Even some of the best and most skilled trans voices took years to develop, and I think most of us consider it a life-long effort (though there are definitely times of more or less investment in working on the voice).
A background in singing is really helpful, and getting into singing or a choir can be a helpful way to strengthen the capacity of the voice and develop some parallel skills that might help translate to voice training for vocal feminization.
here is a voice training "beginner's guide" to get started:
Broadly the two main gendering qualities to a voice are weight and size. With voice training the general idea is to:
ear train: learn to recognize when you weight is heavy vs light, when size is large vs small
mimic and experiment: learn to produce voices that are different weights and sizes, and esp. how to balance those to produce a typical feminine voice (suitably light and small)
practice: just keep listening and recognizing when you're slipping up and to adjust your voice back into the feminine range, over time and lots of persistent practice, this habituates and becomes your voice!
For exploring weight:
For size:
For more about the balance of weight and size:
Videos to help guide expectations for beginners:
For beginners it can also be helpful to explore more achievable lower-pitch feminine voices:
To ear train, it's commonly recommended to listen to and "play along" with Selene's clips:
Note: as you experiment or do any voice training exercise, make sure to pay close attention to:
Experiments to try:
There is a lot of content there to work through, but give yourself time and just relax and enjoy the process as much as you can. Don't aim for success, instead aim to have fun and be playful and experiment. It is important to be persistent, to listen carefully, etc. - but don't expect a perfect voice from the beginning, and it's more important you are engaging and continuing to carefully notice qualities of your voice and others' voices than whether you happen to be able to produce a passing voice right now.
Also, one of the best things about voice training is that it's something you can actually control and work on - a passing voice is possible for most of us - and someone as young as you is almost guaranteed to have the capacity to produce a passing voice. (Especially if you can get on estrogen and block the testosterone from making your voice even more masculine - which continues over a whole lifetime, which is why older women sound more husky and masculine than younger women - it's due to a lifetime of exposure to androgens, even at low levels it impacts the vocal chords!).