"Hi, I'm ______ and I'm an alcoholic"
I've said these words more times than you can imagine. This is not an easy thing to admit about yourself.
I've talked about really terrible things I did - things I am NOT proud of - when drinking and drugging. I've told this stuff to a room full of people who I do not know well. I've told most of this stuff to family members - at least stuff that wouldn't hurt them needlessly. Some of this involved some sexual things.
And in the years of being as honest as I could possibly be about all of that - I COULD NOT ADMIT my desires to crossdress / my feminine side / whatever this is I'm going through. It has always been there, or at least I became aware of it when I was 10 or 11.
But despite feeling free to talk about some genuinely horrible and personally humiliating things I'd done while drunk, I was too ashamed to admit this, even to myself. I knew. Part of me knew. Part of me knew I should just lay my cards on the table. Yet I could not.
In a room full of people, who'd also done terrible, questionable things too, and who were not there to judge - quite the opposite - I was too afraid of judgement, and too ashamed. I couldn't talk to my sponsor. I couldn't talk to my therapist at the time. I was ashamed.
Isn't that something?
Anyway, "Hi, I'm Paula, and I am a crossdresser and a transgendered person. I think at some level I'm supposed to be a woman."
It was really hard to write those last two sentences - I'm sobbing right now.
I appreciate you girls - I don't know what I'd do without this forum. I love all of you, so much.