Can you elaborate on the dream bit?
So, I dream often and vividly. Growing up I would typically dream as a sexless pretty fey creature. Upon hitting wrong-puberty I started having increasingly bad body-horror dreams where I was confronted by a creature wearing my face, which for "some reason" was absolutely horrifying. But sometimes I dreamed of a young woman. My soul mate, such that I would wake up and cry once I realized she "wasn't real". One night I woke up knowing her name- Roanne. I say "her", but after that point, I started dreaming *as* her sometimes. Sometimes I was a disgusting monster with my real face, sometimes I was a sexless badass, and sometimes I was Roanne.
And the two I wasn't dreaming *as* would often appear as characters, with a degree of variation.
As time passed I stopped dreaming as the monster altogether. It/he would still appear though. Usually a creeping presence, darkness or faceless or static or my face. It was terrifying and a lot of my alcoholism was attempts to avoid it. But the thing was, it was trying to help me. If I was putting something off IRL, it would confront me with it... increasingly... until I confronted the problem. I started trying to appease it, and then work with it. I even started tolerating its presence, little by little, instead of waking myself up.
Three years ago it pushed me to start transition. It didn't have to push much. I was already identifying as non-binary or a woman (same as my dreams), I just needed a push to make an appointment.
Here comes the point: It's a guy, now. He doesn't have a face but he has a Victorian coat and hat and sometimes a cane. He's even starting to speak, sometimes, just a little (it always communicated via feelings, or putting me in situations). I think he's extra autistic and a very abstract thinker. And, he's kinda nice. He cares about me a *lot*... enough to hurt me, in the past, to make me listen.
Here is the first dream I remember just hanging out with him. Having a nice time.Oh, I was wrong... here's one just days before I started transition, accepting his helpIn this one, later, I'm far too exhausted for advice and I lash out cruelly. I regret hurting his feelings.Anyway... occasionally, pretty rarely, I do sometimes dream as him again. I think I kept those dreams private for obvious reasons, but I'm more secure now. The one I remember best:
I was a young well-dressed guy driving to the beach through the rural South like I often did. My car broke down and I had to visit a gas station, where several chuds were hanging out in the breeze. They laughed at me and treated me like a girl. But I wasn't a girl. My breasts were bound and covered and my vagina was none of their fucking business. One insisted I was a woman and I just had to punch him. Not out of rage- misgendering is a fact of life- but out of self respect, I guess. They were fucking with the wrong guy, I was quick and stronger than I looked. I laid them out and continued on my way with just a couple of satisfying bruises, head held high.
Weird, right? But when I woke up I didn't feel bad about being a guy for a bit. It felt like a real part of me.
And it is!
It just doesn't front... hardly ever. I was mistaken in that previous message, because I was a woman that day and didn't really remember. But I was a man for one day during Pride 2023, and sometimes he emerges for a bit when I'm really high xD
And he's nothing like the facsimile of guy I performed since puberty. That was a frustrating lie, this is a valid person. and I kinda like that he's trans too.
(Other trans women have described dreaming or feeling like their "guy selves" sometimes, but this isn't that. I have no connection to that masc performance. When I dream about my childhood, it's as an NB girl, because that's what I was. But in those dreams I don't have to hide it.)
(I've focused on the guy persona in this post, but I usually dream as NB-me or woman-me and interact with whoever I'm not. And for the record I'm NB today. I feel the most... stable, I guess. I don't have dysphoria like on woman-days. But woman-days have gender euphoria and more general confidence. We all have an important job to do.)
(Some of the nightmares guy-me sent are logged in the dream thread, but I don't need to review them. I've forgiven him. He was never malicious, just... bad at communicating. And he did help, a LOT.)