I think this is just what it’s like for a while, this is what transition can be like. I also thought I would never pass, I also found it difficult and awkward to figure out how to present as a woman after having lived so long as a man. I am still haunted by whether I’m a “real” woman (and most days I feel like an imposter and deny that I am “real”).

Continuing to live as a man isn’t going to help you, though, as it sounds like you know.

All I can suggest is that you keep feminizing because it sounds like that is what is affirming for you and the alternative sounds harmful to you. It is the same for me, and many of us.

It can feel awkward and difficult at first, but hormones work magic over long periods of time and over the span of years things do get better. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon - so it’s OK if you have bad days, but don’t detransition or quit HRT if ever possible, that just won’t help you.

Personally I found my mood was impacted by the hormones, especially pre-orchi when testosterone would ruin my mood - might be worth figuring out what is most supportive to your mental health and doing concrete things to help stabilize your mood. Some of these things are obvious but commonly ignored, like not drinking alcohol, getting reliable and adequate sleep, eating a diverse and healthy diet, etc. I even find that drinking coffee can give me the blues the next day, so I have to be careful. How frequently I eat and what I eat impacts my mood too. I’m fragile, so I have to pay more attention and be more careful and protective of my mental health. Either way, take seriously your needs and work on protecting yourself, it makes everything easier (besides just the obvious benefits of feeling good).

Besides taking concrete steps to stabilize your mood, there are things you can do to help your transition. Again, it’s OK to have bad days, but continually seeking and implementing concrete steps in the direction of feminizing is helpful. The way this looked for me was carefully evaluating every detail and aspect of transition and trying to optimize it. For example, despite a moderately disabling needle phobia, I learned to do injections instead of taking pills, and I do believe this significantly improved my transition outcomes.

I find the dissociation allows me to look at transition from that detached and objective / technical lens, to see it as something to plan or strategize about even if I feel disconnected from it. This can be helpful, you can approach this as a “technical” problem to solve and thus move past all the emotions that are so disabling.

Another optimization I found helpful: fluctuating my weight - I need to lose weight overall, but having periods where I intentionally overate and gradually increased my weight, especially early in transition, helped distribute fat in feminine patterns. Breasts are fat stores, and I think being overweight has helped me grow breasts, and that seemed to really help me pass socially.

Sometimes people have trouble losing weight, other times people have trouble gaining enough weight. Either way, this is a place where dissociation can be helpful, if it gives you a way of looking that can give you more control, in so far as it dulls emotion and reduces everything to an objective problem to be solved. (There are obvious downsides, but if you’re already dissociated, might as well use it to your advantage to dig yourself out of the hole.)

As far as the “you will never be a real girl” - I would just ignore those sentiments for pragmatic reasons. There is a bit of a philosophical problem here that won’t be readily resolvable in any sufficient way, and the question is just a way to haunt ourselves. Lay people who hold this kind of sentiment aren’t somehow in an advantaged position, they don’t have better access to the knowledge around this issue, and in general they are actually more ignorant. The solutions offered are mostly arrived not because of some great access to ultimate truth or metaphysical insight, but because they are socially and pragmatically reasonable, like a trans woman is a woman because she identifies and lives as a woman. Sure, it’s harder for a trans woman to be socially accepted as a woman when she looks or sounds like a man to others, but a lot of trans women do transition and transitioning does eventually result in passing and living as a woman, as much as most of us might not believe this will happen to ourselves. I truly believed I would never pass, and I transitioned later in life. Yet somehow I am passing in nearly all social contexts, much to my shock and confusion, something I can scarcely believe. I don’t pass to myself in the mirror, either.

I think once you have accumulated enough progress in your transition and your health, once you are presenting as a woman and the hormones have done enough of their work, you too might find yourself accidentally just living life as a woman, at least in the eyes of everyone around you. It is a gradual shift, not a sudden one. It is as much a result of the way people see you as any change inside of you. Really, you were a woman all along anyway, though I suspect we are our own last frontier.

But all of this does require you continue to take HRT and work on feminizing and presenting as a woman. Admittedly that is difficult work, but it sounds like you’re in the middle of it already. What helped me was having clarity that this is the right direction, and that I just need to keep going in the right direction, even if I feel hopeless or skeptical that I will ever reach the destinations I want. Just keep going in the right direction and don’t worry about the outcomes.