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One of the things that irks me about cis people is how they often conceptualise the trans experience backwards. They see transition through a thought experiment of them wanting to be a different gender than the one they already are and that causes a lot of harm.
I'd like cis people to instead think of how life would be like being who you are now in your deepest sense but every experience you've ever had is of the world telling you you aren't who you are and refusing to treat you any other way than what others have decided.
And deeper than that denying that who you are even exists, and any conceptions of what you might be are based on the same false premise alluded to above. So any external depictions of people who might be like you are of what others imagine you to be.
Trans people are seen as cis people who are so divorced from themselves they can't continue to exist without becoming something else entirely. The reality is that we are the complete opposite.
We are a people who have been gasslit and lied to by our friends, families, peers, institutions and societies from the moment we became sentient and have been told that who we are is like exclaiming that 2+2=5.
When we come out and attempt to live as ourselves it's these barriers that we come up against. It's the social construct that psychiatry, medicine, law, culture and relationships are built upon and each one of them needs to be dismantled in order for us to live truthfully.
Many times it's impossible so trans folk try multiple ways to internalise, acquiesce, fight, run away from, these barriers. Some more successfully than others. Much of the trans experience is discovering what you can bear in order to create enough space to breathe.
Even the trans experience is restricted by rules, laws and conventions imposed on us by cis people. I can legally change my body, only within the confines of what cis people have deemed allowable for example.
