When I look at myself in the mirror or look down at my body, sometimes it feels incredibly alien to me. There's always something wrong with me, but lately I've been focusing mostly on my breasts. They're very big and sometimes seeing how big they are is jarring to me, like they just appeared one day all of a sudden. But that's not what happened, of course. I think it's just my dissociative disorder that's throwing me off balance.

Anyways, I was trying to identify as nonbinary because I thought that if I did that, I could get breast reduction surgery or a double mastectomy to appear flatter. To be frank, I'd still like a severe breast reduction, but my concerns are with the fact that I'd potentially have no one to care for me after getting a surgery like that. I'm also trying to convince myself not to do it because surgery is a big thing that can be risky. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is something that my mind is telling me right now, even if I am dissatisfied with the way that my body looks.

Since I'm trying to push surgery off of the table, I'm replacing it with something more healthy, that being exercise. According to my doctor, I need to be at a healthier weight, so I've gotten myself a personal trainer who is helping me to eat healthier and do regular exercise. Putting the exercise into practice is the hard part, but I'm trying to see if losing some weight will make my breasts smaller naturally. But I digress. Whether my breasts decrease in size or not, I'm trying to learn to love my body as it naturally is instead of fighting it constantly using a binder or having unbalanced meals.

Getting back on topic, though, I realized something when it comes to me identifying as nonbinary. What I realized was that I'm wanting to make myself appear more childlike. Childhood trauma and abuse made me want to go back to relive a childhood and adolescence that I never got to have. There's nothing stopping me from doing the things I would have loved to do back then, but my brain feels so broken sometimes that I start believing that I can turn the clock backwards by getting top surgery to "erase" my secondary sex characteristics.

The point is that I'm hurting a lot right now and I'm sad to say that I was looking at "transitioning" as a way out. I thought that I could be free by altering my body and legally changing my name to something different, but then I look back at younger me and realize that doing these things won't bring her back and will only serve to help me distance myself from her further... I guess it just hurts that her life is also my life. It hurts that I can't pretend that I was never abused. Something about saying that almost makes me want to beat myself up for sounding like I'm fishing for pity, but it's the truth. Abuse took so much away from me, but I can't let it take my physical health away from me too. If I get a breast reduction or a double mastectomy, I could be looking at years of medical health issues down the road, potentially for the rest of my life. That's not fair to me or younger me.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to previous posters who wrote about the effects of binding. Reading your stories has convinced me that maybe I need to stop binding myself before it's too late and I'm left with physical pain too.

I'll end by saying that I'm doing my best to remember that there's no wrong way to be a woman. No matter what, I will always be a woman, and that's something to be proud of and wear as a badge of honor.