honestly, cis people should get the chance to throw out their bullshit notions of themselves and put themselves together as adults, rather than piecemeal through their entire lives. the process is frightening (who am I, even?) but the alternative is perpetuating the contradictions we build up inside over the years to explain the difference between how we see ourselves and how the world treats us. I suspect a lot of the mental health issues people face in their teens and twenties are really this and if we could teach people to reconstruct themselves as they changed, rather than carrying around a giant cluster of compensatory notions, we'd all be a lot happier.

so yeah, I'm deeply glad I'm trans. it's taught my something I don't think I could have learned any other way and I'm so much stronger as a person as a result.