It was just after 1am on a warm summer morning. My wife was told after 25 hours of labor she was going to need an emergency C-section. We were terrified as baby’s heart rate kept dropping in and out of normal range all labor and he was struggling to move down the canal.

Nurse: Dad, this is the time to get your phone out and take babies first photo!

Me: She’s not talking to me. I’m not a father. I’m not even sure what I am…

Nurse: This is it! Time to see if it’s a boy or girl!

Me: Oh it’s a boy we found out with the ultrasounds

Nurse: Are you sure? Those aren’t always accurate. You never know! Nope, definitely a boy…

My son was born and I spent the first hour of his life alone as my wife had complications after the c section. We did skin to skin, him on my chest… Cue identity crisis.

Months of not grasping the concept of how I could be a father. Why did I feel more connected to the idea of being a mother. I googled “how to know I’m trans” and came across the Gender Dysphoria Bible that smashed my egg wide open at the tender age of 29

I cracked my best friend’s egg, as it was kinda obvious for years since a few months after we met, and realized I’m an egg, too. Before that I jokingly bought a skirt and stuff due to reddit memes, liked it, but just thought I was a femboy.

Currently we’re on the last day of school of graduating class and today’s Motto is gender swap. As I’m not out, that was my excuse to wear a skirt to school etc., and it does feel a lot better and more natural.

Being raised in a very conservative environment, I wasn’t able to even articulate what a transgender person was until I was an adult. Before that, crossdresser was the closest thing in my vocabulary. I always knew I would rather be a woman and preferred feminine things, but after hearing, “boys don’t do that,” enough times I took a hint. When I learned more about what it means for someone to be transgender, it just clicked. “Oh, I guess I am transgender. Too bad that’s a sin™.”

Since then it has felt like I’ve spent most of my life trying to piece the egg shell back together, rather than seeing it crack. I gave up on putting the egg back together though.

I don’t even remember, funnily enough. It was a slow process that happened over time.

I found myself scrolling through egg_irl far more frequently then I used to just cause I related to the memes. then eventually I saw one the said cis people don’t relate to egg_irl memes and I was like oh shit. then I stayed up all night researching transitioning (every single piece of info I could find on hrt, grs, individuals experiences, etc) and the more I read the more I realized this is absolutely something I want to do

i found r/egg_irl. assuming that’s not enough already, i found celeste there and look where that got me.

I always new I wanted to be a girl, I just never imagned I could actually get there, learning about other trans people and their storys in general helped me accepting who I am. It’s not spactacular but the consequences were… But I’m doing great now!

I was a particularly eggy femboy

Turns out femboy don’t tend to be disphoric and want blockers

I thought r/suddenly_trans was a odd funny subreddit, and one day someone linked to egg_irl in the comments and guess that’s how I finally understood what being trans could mean - that was a very long weekend with a lot of thinking about all the signs that I didn’t see :D

I wrote about my experience here if anyone is interested in reading. The short version is that Life is Strange got me to actively question whether I was trans, as a result of me being absolutely obsessed with it and trying to figure out why I related so much to characters that were nothing like me on the surface. In all honesty, if it weren’t Life is Strange, it would have been something else. But that sure did speed up the process a bit.

It took me 3 years after asking myself directly if I was trans. I felt the need to figure things out independently for some reason. Partly out of shame and internalized transphobia I suppose.

I’ve been wanting to write more about it too - particularly about the weeks following that realization, which consisted of multiple revelations/epiphanies from recontextualizing things that had happened in my past under this new lens of understanding.

My non-binary at the time friend, now partner (!!!) convinced me to let them apply makeup on me. I had already been seriously questioning my gender for a year now. Looking in the mirror afterwards, I thought it looked a little weird but it made my brain very happy. They also changed my name in their phone to Emily after I told them I had picked it out in high school “just in case”. I decided to try transitioning and never stopped, and I’m happier than ever.

I knew “Something went wrong, I should have been a girl/woman” from before I hit puberty, and so I suffered for decades, not knowing and then not believing that transition was something I could do. I even did the whole “I wish I was trans so that I could transition” thing.

My egg cracking came about from a work mate at my workplace coming out and transitioning. He showed me that it really is possible, and that my workplace is accepting.

After processing that, about 12 months later, I stopped thinking “I should have been a woman” and accepted that I always have been. It was a literal moment, standing in my bedroom door. And that was that. The egg was gone.

After denying previous cracks in my teens and twenties as just a part of me beeing weird; I will list my curent final round that lead to loosing my denial:

1. Actually… playing Celeste. I don’t even remember what it was, but it somehow it brought my mind to think that I have to process something I surpressed and since then it didn’t leave my head. That’s also why my chosen Name is a homage: Madlaine

2. A year later a psychologist (unrelated issue) put me on the right way to find out that I’m actually a veery high masking autistic person (CAT-Q 148…) and the negative results in my youth are wrong because my symptoms in earlier assessments don’t match the symptoms of a male autistic person but of a female autistic person. And back then (and still today…) it was in many doctors minds that autism is clearly gender-specific. This realization that I’m actually allowed to be different and don’t have to actively fit in (my parents denied the possibility of me being neurodivergent because the tests were negative) gave me the energy to rediscover myself. And the gendered test-result were forshadowing

3. While already seeing myself as genderfaer (enby-fem genderfluid with only very rarely masc-parts) a few weeks later, I still was in denial. I’m autistic so enby is kinda okay. But binary-trans? Me? naah

4. After a while I discovered that my gender identity can rather be described as “sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes 0 but never anything else than femme”. At this point I already wear some feminine clothing at home and outed myself to my gf.

5. < crack > GF was away for the weekend and I bought my first makeup to try to get some euphoria to get over a depressive phase. And seeing myself without that weird beardshadow and with some contouring and some accessories… wow… I discovered what was wrong all these years.

6. <crack crack> I never imagined my own wedding. I just couldn’t imagine myself at my own wedding in a suit. Which is weird. I love suits. I love women in suits. My next suite will be tailored feminine, but I will still wear suits.
   But one evening, I suddenly see my wedding. I’m in this fabulous mixture of a violet suit and dress. I’m a women … so that was why I could never imagine myself as husband…

7. < final cracks > telling my girlfriend my name. I’m Madlaine now. She calls me her girlfriend now. I will one day become her wife <3

8. If all goes well, HRT starts in December. 30 by then, but well, it’s never to late I was told.