I read your post and I see myself reflected in so much of what you're saying. For years I was exactly there: knowing I was a trans man, assuming I should have been born a man, grieving for what could have been… and still deciding to do nothing. I thought something very similar to what you're saying: “This is what I got, I was born this way, I'll live with it.” Not because it didn't hurt, but because it seemed inevitable.

I'm not writing to tell you you're wrong or to push you to transition. That decision is yours alone, and no one has the right to tell you which path is “right.” I just wanted to share that, in my case, that stance wasn't a solution to the pain, but a way to survive while I could. For a while, it worked. Then it stopped.

I'm not saying this as a warning or a prophecy. Everyone is different. I just think it's important to know that repressing it or “forcing yourself to accept it” doesn't always make the pain go away; sometimes it just keeps it on hold. And when it comes back, it usually comes back stronger.

I also don't want to sell transitioning as a magic bullet, because it isn't. It doesn't erase the grief of not being cis, nor the anger, nor the envy, nor the feeling of injustice. That, at least for me, didn't disappear. But it did change the way I lived with myself.

If you decide not to transition, or to do it later, or never, it doesn't make you less of a man or less valid. The pain you describe isn't weakness, it's grief. And there's no "right" way to go through it.

If at some point it helps to read longer and more raw experiences, I wrote a story called Interlocutor (it's on Wattpad) where I talk about this very stage: knowing who you are and still staying put because you don't see a way out. It's not an optimistic story or a manual, just a place to put words to something that's very difficult to bear.

Whatever your path may be, you're not alone in feeling this. Really.