Should I Change My Gender?

If you are someone who is considering changing your gender, maybe this also describes you: “I hate my body. I don't feel 'right' in my own skin. Nothing is working for me. No one likes me the way I am. Everyone is telling me I'm much more like a girl (for those born as a male), or much more like a boy (for those born as a female). I don't get love from anyone except my LGBT friends. I don't fit in. I hate the way I look.”
If this describes you, and you're considering changing genders, you may also be thinking a gender change will be the solution to almost all of these problems. You've seen people who have made the transition be held up as heroes, and admired for their bravery. They look so much more confident. The trans community is waiting for you with open arms. It's a path to love, acceptance, and finally feeling good about the way you look.
I'm terribly sorry to tell you, this is all a mirage. It will feel great and empowering for the first few years. Maybe even a decade or so. Your discomfort and lack of love and belonging will be satisfied for a little while, but like a persistent hunter, your fears, doubts, lack of connection, lack of love, lack of belonging will come back, and next time with a vengeance. I really, truly, sympathize with you, and I wish in my deepest being that finding love in this world was just a matter of changing your shape through drugs and surgery. Unfortunately, the problems you're experiencing are even harder to truly fix in some ways, but easier in other ways.