transexual? something else?

[Guest Rabbit]

i'm not expecting some kind of magical diagnosis from a forum, i already know i need to talk to a gender therapist and i've found one that looks to be sufficient, but i'd still like to hear opinions if anyone has them, and in the meantime writing this will help me be somewhat prepared for what i want to say to him

apologies in advance if this is somewhat scatterbrained, i'm trying my best to paint a complete picture but i've never told my life to anyone or thought about it as a timeline so it comes in fragments that i'll try to put together

most of my life i've thought about being female, i've had plenty of intense dreams about just living as one, and it's pretty heavy to wake up from and remember who you really are. for a few the early puberty years i fixated on castration, convinced it would make me more feminine, but i'm glad i never did anything drastic about it. at around 15 I started letting my hair grow and it was fun to dress and be somewhat androgenous.. i tried to do the full crossdressing thing twice but it just felt weird and wrong. about a year after that phase, i started skipping school heavily due to bullying and eventually quit entirely.

i started working for my dad in construction, and even though i'd now become one of the "macho" guys, i was still envious of women, sometimes catching myself wishing for some woman's body that i saw on the street.. even if they were fat, or ugly. i was especially envious of the relationship they could have with their friends, all of my male friends have been so guarded, and even when they're not homophobic it still feels like i have to act like a man around them for their sake.

so i tried to figure out just what i was for a long time. i knew a little about transexuals, but i also knew that i didn't like crossdressing, i didn't play with barbies, and i didn't feel like i was trapped in my body, i more felt i was trapped by how men are supposed to act. so i just assumed that i was being a typical gay man and simply being envious of females for more simple reasons.. i eventually settled on "gay" as a label, even though it sometimes felt like an act as well

then a few weeks ago came my "road to damascus" moment, i guess you could say.. i found a coworker of a friend's blog through facebook and it was a record of her life transitioning from male to female for the past 3 years. i devoured every entry and a lot of the things i read really resonated with me, namely that she didn't play with barbies and she didn't crossdress.

i was so excited because i'd never even considered that i could be female and still wear the clothes i like. i felt relieved and immediately started researching and even trying to get back into shape, finding motivation to do something with my life for the first time in a long time.

but now that the initial high is over i have doubts about completely changing my life and potentially draining my bank account over a blog.. it just seems like an utterly ridiculous thing to say, "i read a blog and it changed my life!". even if i do try to go through with it, i think i'll have a hard time finding a therapist who will recommend hormones to someone who isn't even going to wear a dress.

i don't even know what normal people think about.. for all i know everyone thinks about the other gender that way and i'm just making a problem out of nothing and trying to attach some stupid label to it.

i'm still fairly young so i'd like to figure this out now instead of when im 30 or 40, which would just make the decisions more complicated.

anyone have any thoughts?

[Guest GraceWindell]

Well, i'm only 18 and i already see i can compare with you on a few things.

First off, i envied the same things you did about a woman, one of the most envied things being their relationships with their friends. I agree with you that i aswell i guess you could say "have to" fit in and act like a man around male friends, which i hate oh so much. At first, i hated dressing up in girls clothes, i think its because of the mindset we grow up with that only "creepers" and such do those things which is so not true. after a good year and researching about being transgender i finally urged myself to crossdress and once you do it one time, the wierd feeling leaves you, or atleast it did with me. Being a girl isn't always about dressing up pretty, its about your personality and mindset more-so than clothes, i sometimes want to just dress in what i want to wear, like just some jeans and a t-shirt and not wear nothing fancy, which is completely fine, regular woman do that all the time. I would suggest talking to a really close friend, preferrably a girl as girls are usually more understanding to this kind of thing, and let all your thoughts flow to them, it really helps you figure out who you are when you can talk about it with someone you know, once again, atleast it did for myself.

Best of luck to you, i hope you find out who you are.(:

~Grace