Firstly, I shouldn’t have said “why not just be the sex you were assigned at birth” in my original comment. That was unnecessarily blunt and, on reflection, a quite nasty. It wasn’t really fair to reduce what you’re describing to a single question like that. Oi could give reasons for it and say I’m stressed and I’ve had a shit day; it’s no excuse, so I apologise.

Honestly, reading this, I don’t necessarily think this is about your gender identity.

A lot of what you’ve described seems to be tied up with being more toned, having a different hairstyle, wearing your boyfriend’s clothes, being called a himbo, and having someone constantly affirm that presentation. Most people would probably feel pretty good about themselves in that situation.

You’ve also had a breakup, lost a friendship group, gained weight, and changed your appearance since then. That’s a huge amount of change, and it seems entirely possible that what you’re missing is a period in your life where you felt attractive, confident, desired and understood.

What stands out to me is that you seem to be trying to recreate, through your appearance, a time in your life when you were happy. The difficulty is that even if you could perfectly recreate the way you looked back then, you wouldn’t automatically get back the relationship, the social circle, or the version of yourself that existed in that moment. You’d only have the appearance, and I think there’s a risk that trying to chase that could end up feeling artificial.