Transfem

Ended up writing way more than I intended, so I'm editing this to add this introduction at the start. From the details of your post and comments, I'm not sure if you want to hear exclusively from people who have detransitioned, or if perspectives from people who are still transitioning are also welcome. I have not detransitioned, so if it's the former, just ignore my ramblings. 😅

I remember having feelings along these lines really early in transition, during the first few chaotic months after coming out of repression. At the time I was concerned about what it means to be a woman, how a woman is supposed to think about things and look at things, feel about things, etc., and how I was supposed to realign my habits and outlook to match that hypothetical ideal.

Ultimately, what I have come to understand and internalize (probably still ongoing, but I've come far) is that I've always been a woman, so the way a woman thinks and feels is the way I've always thought and felt, I just didn't know it. There's no need to change anything inherent to us - we had already arrived before we started. For me, what needed changing was to to try to unpack the various learned behaviors that gradually replaced and buried my intuitions and impulses, and unlearn them to see where I end up. Essentially, just to be more spontaneous/genuine, and less inhibited. Still a work in progress, but it's getting better all the time.

I'm not sure if that fits your situation, but it's what came to mind when you described feeling disconnected from "absolute" womanhood. I'm increasingly convinced that the very idea of some kind of absolute or canonical vision of womanhood is inherently sexist and oppressively dogmatic. As you yourself pointed out, it presents in infinitely many ways, so how can it be absolute?

If these musings seem relevant to you, I highly recommend this post: https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/jubilee That was one of the most helpful articles I've come across to help shift my understanding of and thinking about gender in general, and helped me get to my current mindset.

Bringing all this back to your original question of how I deal with the fact that I "will never be a real girl” - I essentially reject the premise of the question. To the extent that the concept of a "real girl" even exists, I already am one, and always have been. For me, the only practical questions along those lines are how I deal with not passing, or with not achieving my aesthetic preferences. Not sure if those interpretations of the question are interesting for you or not, so I'll answer them in brief.

On not passing: Passing isn't really important to me. I'm fortunate to live in an area where I don't feel like my safety is threatened by being visibly trans. If that changes, I'd probably deal with it by moving somewhere else, where people are less dickish.

On not being able to look how I'd prefer: This one is a downer, for sure. It doesn't really affect whether or not I'd transition, though. Even if I'm not pretty, I'm still so much happier transitioning than not that it just doesn't matter in terms of decision-making. And as a bonus, I'm given to understand that feeling down over body image problems puts you in the same boat as the vast majority of women in the world (cis or not), so if anything, that should get you closer to that "absolute" ideal of womanhood anyway. I basically deal with this from both ends: by gradually making changes to get closer to where I'd like to be, and by gradually working on mental health to be less concerned about it. Even if there are limits to how far I can go in both directions, I still feel a lot better for continuously making the attempt.