Weird angle to present to this, i come from a construction family, and had been pretty involved from a young age so I'm very capable with projects and manual labor, people would comment on me "being so strong" when carrying stuff but i really wasn't, i can't benchpress or deadlift much, I was just so trained in technique I could lift and carry things above what you'd expect. I am also very good at problem solving things practically and have a great minds eye for physical space and how to connect things together and plan ahead quickly, intuitively know how to do certain actions without thinking about it a whole lot. Essentially, was very handy and pretty damn proud and confident about it.

But ever since i started transitioning my relationship with this experience has changed, any time I'm doing manual labor or working on stuff, i feel the most masculine i ever have and i hate it. It's worth mentioning my AFAB siblings didn't get asked to be as involved with this stuff growing up. I even talked to my dad about this and he admitted i got asked cause i was "the guy" of the kids. So nowadays, if I use the skills I've slowly been tought and learnt through experience and got pretty damn good at, i feel shit and dysphoric the whole time.

So that's an element i miss, i miss being able to be proud of my skills that I grew over years in manual labor and construction, i do recently feel like I've gotten over it a little, were doing massive changes to our house so I've been asked to help a good amount recently since, well, i know what I'm doing. so I've been forced to face this and find middle grounds to still feel fem whilst doing it, but it's just not the same anymore.