At the end of the day I grew up. Rather than spending my time fantasizing about a a hypothetical different version of myself that was happy, I did the hard work of building a person that I was happy with. It took a decade plus to stop my head spinning from the confusion of it all, and then another five or so years of looking back at it and trying to figure out what it all meant for my life. In the end I was just an insecure kid who was afraid of male expectations.

Is that normal for an allegedly cis person? To take a decade plus to "build a person" you're happy with, and then ruminate on it for another five years? I'm around cis men a lot to me it seems that for them "getting your life together" mostly means getting swole and getting a better paying job and maybe building a social circle of people you hang out with regularly. tbf the getting a good paying job can take a while, but I think you can be happy with a just okay job if you have the other two, which, I can't really speak from personal experience, but from what I've seen in mentally healthy cis guys shouldn't take nearly that long.

(I am probably oversimplifying what cis men generally want for their lives, but I'm just saying, barring things like mental illness and extreme poverty, I've never seen one take that long to grow into themselves)