It's Not Just A Phase

Among all the reactionary comebacks against gender, sexual and neurodivergent minorities one of the most invalidating thing to say is a variation of "It's just a phase." It is a type of polite bigotry I hate, usually followed by the platitudes of "How much they care about us." It's so convincing too because society drills in us that there is an unchanging soul at the human core, whether it is backed up by religious or pseudoscientific dogmas. Which means whatever problems you are having in your head exist because of  bad influence, corruption or more romantic and ever elusive childhood years. Teenage issues or even political connections are generally handwaved like this too. It's expected thar teens are rebellious and hot-blooded and whatever problems they are having is just hormones being wild, once they are adults surely they all would turn into adults who care nothing other than their own atomized issues and play their appropriate roles for the heteronormative society. Of course, that often doesn't happen and "it's a phaase" narrative then becomes more openly violent: "freak, degenerate, messed up in the head" with implicit or sometimes explicit expectations of the disappearance of the said evil different person.

Life is not a linear experience that can be nicely divided into phases. There is no a perfect pure soul to return after an abnormality, every little thing that happens to you leaves you with a mark, changes you in one way or another. People never stop changing in their lives, they can consciously resist to do so but that decision too leaves its mark. Even a articular life event or situation is indeed temporary, it still influences the person and it changes the person's future
Alternatively, if we want to look life as phases, it would be clear that people constantly enter and exit phases and go through multiple of them at the same time. For example, my transness isn't a phase but my pre-discovery years was and me being in closet will be hopefully just an another phase leading into "my physical transition" and "being out to people as trans" phases. Once again, there is no perfect soul to return to, even when people try to find their true selves, they are in fact becoming a new person, just one that fits better to them. It's not important whether the situation is temporary or permanent, people don't switch between fixed discrete states, rather they fluctuate between fluid interconnected ones.
As for myself, I certainly had a lot of phases which are not actually phases at all. I turned my back from each and every one of them with a valiant denial and unbroken ignorance until they all crushed on my face and broke my resistance, like knots of a cloth finally breaking apart after they were slowly loosened out. What were those "phases", let's look at them: (Some sex talk ahead)

• My daydreaming. I believed in the cliché of people losing creativity while growing up and I simply thought my daydreaming would vanish until I "reached adulthood". Of course if anything, they actually became more vivid and elaborate. My childhood daydreams were heavily influenced by media I consumed, but it's only after I entered puberty I started to fantasize about  more original, more personal and more out there stuff.
• A certain girl character in my daydreams. This girl was pretty central to my day dreams, she was almost always the main character of the stories in my head. As my other daydreams, she became more and more detailed: Long black hair, brown eyes - though that changed sometimes -, always my age, cheeks and lips that resembled mine, wore long dresses like gowns or simple skirts and shirts, introvert, shy, calm, caring, helpful. I thought I was just imagining a girlfriend, but it turned out she was what I wanted to be in the end. She didn't change, I just became her and now daydreaming as such.
• My pacing and stimming. When my brain works extra hard such as I think deeply or daydream, I generally gat an urge of strolling, running, wobbling back and forth, sometimes capping and talking to myself. Though I was never too insecure about that, I nevertheless thought they would just go away eventually. When I understood that was not going to happen, I finally got I was never exactly "normal", it took to finally learn about autism to fully embrace this side of mine.
• My general sensitivity, especially towards heat; such as hot food, being annoyed, sweating more easily at hot weather, hot water etc and sunlight. I was always quite sensitive, everyone thought this was due to my premature birth and it would leave me like my frequent illnesses left me, later they thought this was something I need to get over for "growing up", I was sometimes chided for not drinking like other adults. But I learned it was in fact, an another autism symptoms, Funny enough, even people in my inner circle begrudgingly got used to this despite knowing nothing about autism.
• My weird relationship with the sex. Since my puberty, I was in a constant state of confused horny thoughts; patiently waiting the time where I would finally get into porn, enjoy things everyone else thought, masturbate like any other boy, leave my fetishes for regular thoughts about sex. Of course, none of those happened. Instead, I discovered I was demisexual. This was largely as a result of the intimacy towards my girlfriend, things became to me more clear and thanks to the incredibly accepting and warm community I have found, I embraced being on ace-spectrum.
• My weird habits of masturbation. I always feel kind of weird towards my penis and never touched it too much. Once again, I patiently expected for the day it would just pass away but it turns out, it's just an effect of gender dysphoria. Oddly enough, even though I want my penis gone now, I started to like it in a way too, it feet less alien somehow.
• My passion for writing. I always liked writing a lot, it was with my parent's influence that I mostly gave up on it at high school to find a "real job". It took me actually pushing myself through and actually start writing a little to realise just how much I love writing and I wanted it to be larger than just a casual side activity.
• My passion for video games. Most people around me kinda drifted away from video games, I expected something similar like getting on more "adult stuff." But it was exactly the opposite. I liked video games in childhood but it was just another fun activity to me. At highschool, I understood I actually liked my video games really a lot, I liked thinking about them, I liked talking about them. I still want to at least contribute to the development of a video game. Consequently, I stopped pushing myself into get into "regular adult stuff" like football and cars and fully accepted my nerdness, becoming at peace with my strengths and weaknesses more.

If I dig into my memories, I am certain that I can find even more stuff. But my life was a constant battle between denial and discovery, with one side society's expectations and the other side my wishes and desires. Realising your wishes and "just being yourself" is not easy, you might forced to sacrifice a lot, but remember they are not just "phases", whether it's a repressed identity, ora problem that will live with you such as depression, you need to embrace it and decide what are you going to do with it but don't deny yourself, the longer you keep denying the harder accepting gets.