It's Roxanne Now

March 31st is International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day to celebrate transgender individuals.

On March 31st, 2025, I began telling some of my closest friends to start she/her'ing me and calling me Roxanne. On June 25, 2025, I began medically transitioning, and on January 1st, 2026, I publicly came out as a trans woman.

I don't know when exactly I started questioning my gender. I was pretty young for sure. I remember being maybe 4 or 5 years old and feeling out of place. When I was a kid, usually all the boys would hang out together and play whatever video game while the girls would be off doing their own thing. While I enjoyed my time hanging out with the boys, I found myself longing to hang out with the girls. Call it curiosity, or whatever you want, but even until today, I kinda just always felt out of place. The weird guy who never really felt comfortable around just anyone. Sure I found comfort in family and friends, but I've always just felt off.

I was around 12 years old when I really started getting curious. Like most gender questioning kids, I did find myself digging through my mom's clothing, grabbing a bra, and sprinting to my room to try it on. My brother was watching TV in the living room while my mom was out of the house for whatever reason. After putting it on, I stared at myself in the mirror for a while. I didn't immediately hate what I saw. But I felt so weird. This was a taboo. No little boy should be trying on their mother's clothing.

However, I grew up in a family of seamstresses. My mother has been sewing, fixing, and doing clothing alterations since she was little. My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother both were seamstresses for the bulk of their lives. Even my paternal grandfather was a tailor at a point in his life. My mother would have myself and my brother put on dresses and other pieces of clothing so that she would be able to adjust the hem on them.

Like most boys of my age. I was immediately put off by the idea. Why would a young boy want to wear a dress instead of just sitting in front of the PlayStation and playing with his brother. After this happened a few times, it occurred to me that I actually didn't hate it. I still acted like I did, because that's how I was supposed to act. I was the big brother, I had to set an example for my younger brother.

So whenever my mother needed us to put on a dress, one of us would stand on the chair we were sitting on, put on the dress, and continue playing whatever game were in the middle of. It was an annoyance, but I wasn't nearly as annoyed as my brother. I was always reluctant to put on whatever my mom wanted me to wear, and as excited as I was to take such an outfit off, I wanted to just linger wearing them a bit longer.

Around the time I hit my teenage years, I ended up moving out of my childhood bedroom to the empty room on the upper floor. Across the hall was the room with all of the video games, computers, sewing machine, and my mother's closet. After everyone went to bed for the night, I would walk across the hall and try on whatever dress my mom was working on for whoever she was working with. I sometimes grabbed stuff from her closet, just trying on whatever I wanted to.

Of course it felt weird. I had no idea why I felt so compelled to do this. Perhaps it was because of the taboo. There was an indistinguishable rush of emotion I felt as I put on whatever dress was available. I now know that feeling as euphoria.

I think from a young age I knew I just always wanted to be a girl. There was just always a longing for me to be one. I'm not sure if I was upset as a kid that I was a boy. The lack of information, the lack of understanding, there was a world that I didn't know existed. I was confused, and scared. All of that I kept bottled up for years and years.

I was around 15 or 16 when I started talking to very close friends about gender stuff. The oldest messages I have record of are from September 2016. Texting lifelong friends and telling them that I've just wanted to be on hormones for years at that point. By then, those friends have seen pictures of me in dresses and the like.

Before then, when I turned 18 in 2015, I ended up some lingerie from an adult site. Of course it felt like I was indulging in a fetish. I was barely legally an adult exploring myself for the first time behind closed doors. Leaning into things that were taboo that felt wrong, but felt so so right. A year later I ended up buying my first bra. That lived right underneath my bed, up against the wall, for years and years. Every few days or weeks I would put it on and sleep in it. Sometimes if I was feeling adventurous, I would wear it and walk around the corner and go to the grocery store and do a little shopping while hiding it under whatever sweater.

In 2017 I started dating someone I had met at a con in October and we just started talking. We were in a voice call one night being flirty and one thing led to another when I told them that I owned things like lingerie, bras, and other outfits. We started sexting and eventually started dating, and I ended up buying some more clothes because of her.

Time passed, we broke up, I dated someone else, broke up with them, and then I started dating another person.

It wasn't until Labor Day in 2019 that I told my partner I might be trans. We were hanging out with her friends about to watch a movie and my partner disappeared as soon as we were supposed to start watching. I told everyone else to just watch and I found my partner downstairs. I came out to her and we went back upstairs to rejoin the group. Later that week she came over to my house and I ended up putting on one of the outfits. We ended up having sex with me wearing the outfit and it was euphoric, but I think that was the last time my gender came up in that relationship.

It's April 22nd, 2020 now. I was talking to one of my friends who knew about this side of me and it was the first time that I accepted myself as a trans woman. My mind at this point was a mix of emotions. I had thought about taking hormones a lot at this point and when I asked why my friend had started T, he said that he was feeling what I was, but in reverse.

It wasn't until April of 2021 that I told another very close friend about the whole situation. They had asked if there was a name that I wanted to try using and that was the first time I told someone to call me "Roxy". They jokingly called me "Roxanne" a couple of weeks later and it stuck.

But on April 30th, 2021, I found myself at a Planned Parenthood. It was for a hormone consult. It was reassuring to get the information, but I wasn't ready for anything further.

The next few years were a lot. I struggled with my appearance all my life. I was overweight as a kid, and in 2019/2020 I was at my all-time heaviest at 165lbs (75kg) or so. My lowest was 115lbs (52kg) in January 2023 and I still wasn't content with the way I looked. I wanted the typical "washboard abs" male physique because I kept thinking that would make me happy. But there was always this thought in the back of my mind that if I wasn't happy, maybe I would be happier on hormones.

I was in a constant cycle of exercising a lot and failing to meet my goals. All while wishing I had a body I could love. Nothing I did made me happy and every day I thought about how better my life would be if I was born a girl.

On Trans Day of Visibility in 2024 I began experimenting with using "She/Her" pronouns. It was kinda in secret and kinda in public. I spend a lot of my time on Twitch and there's an extension that you can use to show off your pronouns. I set them to "She/Her" and haven't changed them since. It felt good, and while there were some moments of panic when I felt like I needed to change it, they passed very quickly.

As March 31st, 2025 began rapidly approaching, I felt compelled to try having friends refer to me as "Roxanne/Roxy" and to use "She/Her" pronouns. I sent the following message out:

Happy Trans Day of Visibility! For the past year I've been experimenting with using she/her pronouns and I'd like to be more open about it. I feel comfortable sharing this here and I'd prefer going forward you'd all call me by Roxanne, Roxy for short.

I knew I was going to be met with overwhelming support and love, but I don't think I was prepared for it. I got hit with "The Police" song pretty often, which is totally fair, it was a partial inspiration for the name. I told my friends that I had been "out" to them for years, and they were extremely supportive as well.

Now things were moving fast, but it wasn't until the 10th that things kinda changed.

I was being flirty with one of those friends who knew I was trans for years. We're very close and they know I constantly joke with them. They sent me a picture of them in a sundress and it reminded me that I hadn't put on any fem clothing in a long time. One thing led to another and it led to the following exchange:

Me: for some reason part of my brain thinks putting on stuff like lingerie is a weird fetish thing
Me: but when i put on a bra everything feels just so much better, like im at ease
Them: that is because You Are A Girl and you are so used to Not Being Allowed To Be A Girl
...
Them: if you wanna be a girl. You Are A Girl. End Of.
Me: i do, and i am

In that moment, I had gone from accepting myself as a woman, to embracing it. I felt so much better about myself. I sent the following message to what same friend the next day:

i want you to know that you've done irreparable damage to my brain over the last 24 hours
and i can't thank you enough
im finally starting to feel truly like myself and it's wonderful. i don't have the words to describe the feelings
just everything feels amazing right now, i have never felt more like a woman than i do right now and I have you to thank

A few days later on the 13th, I found myself talking to a friend that I message around this time once a year. I asked how they were doing and they brought up that they had top surgery only 3 weeks prior. Naturally, this led to a conversation about gender and it may have been the most intense conversation I've ever had about who I am. It went on for about 3 hours, and we talked about pretty much every aspect of what it means to be trans.

That night I couldn't sleep I tossed and turned for hours, just thinking about the conversation I had earlier. Somehow I ended up making an appointment to go to the local Planned Parenthood. It was at 3AM when I made it, and the appointment was for 3PM.

At 5PM, I was back at home with a bottle of estradiol in hand.

I immediately messaged everyone I had talked to in the last 2 weeks with an image of the bottle in hand.

And yet, I didn't take a pill.

Life had moved extremely fast the past 2 weeks, let alone the past 4 days. I wasn't prepared to take anything because not even a few days before I hadn't ever thought it was something I'd ever do.

It was reassuring in a way to finally have these little blue pills in my hand. My entire life had led up to this moment, and it felt like I had this miracle pill in my hand. I felt that this bottle would be the solution to all of my problems. That as soon as I took the first pill, just 2mg, I would be happy.

Over the next 2 months a lot of things happened. A lot of introspection, and a lot of talking with family. Over the course of those two months I felt the full range of emotions that humans were capable of.

Ultimately I had a date picked out for myself. June 25th. I figured that was enough time to get everything sorted out that I wanted to get sorted out. To tell everyone that I wanted to tell.

I spoke to my brother first, then my cousins, and then my parents. Everyone was accepting which was nice. One of my biggest concerns was with having kids as that was the big major factor as to why I put off starting HRT for years. I ended up freezing my sperm which was the best thing I could've done as it helped put my mind at ease.

Between April 14th and June 25th too many things happened. For the rest of April I fought with myself. Struggling to decide if I was ready. At most maybe a dozen people knew I was struggling with gender. That number began to grow rapidly in April.

At the beginning of May, I had bit the bullet on some shape-wear, some bra inserts, and a pair of leggings. I had thought about breast prostheses for years and years, but I didn't want to commit to something that I couldn't easily hide, or buy something that wouldn't suit my body. I found a place that's very local and bought from them. It only took two days for it to make it to my front door and to say I was excited was an understatement. I took my favorite pair of jeans and a thin loose-fitting shirt.

I took a picture for a "before" so I could see what I'd look like after. I stripped down to just my underwear and put the shape-wear on. Now the shape-wear is basically underwear with padding for your hips. It adds 1.25 inches to both sides. The second I put them on, I found my hands running down my sides and my heart skipped a beat. I almost started hyperventilating.

I put my jeans on over the shape-wear and just admired myself in the mirror for a few minutes. I finally had curvy hips. The way my jeans were sitting on me was incredible and it felt amazing.

Next up was the bra. I put it on as normal, and then put in the inserts. It felt super good, so I put the shirt on. I looked in the mirror and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I had breasts, boobs, tits, whatever you want to call them, they were sitting right on my chest. I wanted to cry right there and then. I was finally a woman with a body to match.

I changed into a few more outfits before finally putting on all three of my new purchases and a normal shirt, taking dozens of pictures along the way. I laid down in bed for a moment to just kinda take things in, and this was the first time that I felt like the dysphoria was just gone.

Only a few short days later one of the people I had recently come out to was pushing me to experiment with things like makeup and nail polish. It was an absolute struggle for me to actually do it, but I spent a good chunk of time just buying a few things. When I retreated home, I ended up putting it on and it was overwhelming. It was the first time ever that I understood what it meant to be "pretty". Once again I felt like crying.

Halfway through May, my maternal grandmother's 1-year memorial service was being held in Florida and nearly all of my cousins on that side of the family were going to be in attendance. Out of the 11 of us, 7 of us walked away that weekend knowing I had brought my bottle of HRT with me on that trip. Only one of my older cousins was not in attendance, and I didn't tell the youngest 3, but I was happy with that result.

It was a very wild time after that. During that Florida trip I scheduled an appointment with a therapist and started seeing her. She helped me so much throughout our time together. The thing that stood out to me the most during our first session was that when I was showing off pictures of me with some makeup on. At the end of the session, she said that the happiest I was all session was when I was showing pictures of myself with makeup on. It motivated me to put on more and more fem outfits as we continued our sessions for the rest of the year.

At the beginning of June, I came out to my parents. The stress was eating me alive. I was living a double life and it felt horrible. I was crying on the phone to my cousin moments before I was going to tell them. So much so that I drove across town to get gas so I would have a moment to speak to her privately.

Somehow it was the easiest time I had coming out to anyone. They were totally fine with it. I was kind of angry in a way because I had built this moment up to be one of the scariest moments in my life and it went off without a hitch.

The two days before I told my parents, my cousins had sent me some care packages in the mail. It was filled with clothes, dresses, skirts, bras, makeup, nail polish, purses, hair products, face care products, soaps, and so much more. It was overwhelming and once again I found myself wanting to cry.

The rest of June was crazy. I was at a festival that weekend, ended up getting a cocktail named after me. So many little things happened over those few weeks.

Then the fateful day arrived. The previous night my aunt wasn't doing too well, and while we stayed with her for a few hours that night, she passed on June 25th. It was a very rough day for me, but I needed to do this for me.

At 10:38PM, I placed a tablet of estradiol on my tongue.

After struggling for years, dreaming of this day. It was finally here.

I was finally on HRT.

This post will probably change over time as I come back to it for edits, but I wanted to get this out as soon as I could. I'll fix it up in due time, a lot of it has been copy and pasted, altered from other things I've written, but I'm glad to have finally made this public in a way.

As always, I will leave you with a few words.

Be A Real Person