I spent every one of those years where I wasn’t too dissociated to care blaming myself for not transitioning sooner and I still do it sometimes. I don’t really have an answer on how to deal with those feelings except to say that at a certain point you have to just pick up the pieces and keep moving. I’ll never get those years back, or the childhood I could have had if things were different, but I’m here now and I get to become myself at last

Yeah, I'm trying to do my best on the "just pick up the pieces and keep moving" part. I guess a part that's really helped me recently is really getting a feeling for how incompetent a lot of people that "have their shit together" are, they're sometimes even more clueless than I am navigating life.

Feeling like "successful" people that I've negatively compared myself against before are also dipshits has made me a lot less worried about being perceived as a weirdo? Like I already didn't really give a shit about what transphobes thought of me outside of my physical safety, but just doing more shit for myself and getting out more has made me feel a lot better about just going for shit and worrying less about fucking it up or looking like a dipshit, and that kinda extends to gender expression and transition for me.