Hey all,
I've been a member of this forum for..... *looks* .... nearly 8 years now. I'm 33. Just asking for positive thoughts, prayer, etc. as I go visit a therapist next week about all this stuff.
I've always wished I'd been born a girl. When I was about 7 or 8, I had confided to a friend once that I felt like a girl trapped in a boy's body...those words. At the time, I wasn't even aware of the anatomical differences. I just knew they could play with Barbies, wear dresses, have long beautiful hair, and so on. When I DID find out about the different plumbing about a year later, I immediately, strongly, actively began to wish I'd been a girl, and haven't really stopped. I couldn't talk to my parents about it. I knew they wouldn't offer any support...and years later when they busted me with some panties in my drawer, I found out I was right about that. :P Super conservative religious household... You get the picture.
I am attracted to women, have had some girlfriends and so on, but I've never really dated all that much. My dating mishaps and failed relationships, though, have convinced me that I don't understand the female mind as well as I'd like to think. I can talk about being a woman trapped in a man's body all day, and I love all the girly things that I'm not "supposed" to indulge myself in, but when it comes down to it I don't really think like a woman. I'm definitely a man through and through... I'm just unhappy about it.
Which leads us to more recent stuff. I've gotten to be super close friends with one of my guild-mates in World of Warcraft, and it just so happens she's been going to school to become a therapist. Of course because of billions of ethical reasons, she can't actually council me. But after one of her classes, she told me "You know, we're going over gender dysphoria lately, and are you sure you're not transgender? Because I'm just saying, the things they described in class and in the textbooks sound just like you." Then she grabbed the DSM (the book of diagnoses that has all the criteria of each diganosis) and read to me the criteria for gender dysphoria. I had to admit, it did sound like me.
I can't transition...for a lot of reasons. Family, church, a whole lot of things that come with living in the belt buckle of the Bible belt. And I've insisted to her repeatedly that transitioning...I don't think it would even fulfill what I really wish, which is that I had been -born- female. I guess...even though a transition would make me legally female, it just wouldn't... I dunno, I don't think it would be "real" enough to me? Don't know if that makes sense and I mean no offense to those who have transitioned or undergone surgery.
I've also been going to a thing at a local church (not the church I regularly attend) called Restore, which is sort of like an AA-type thing but for all sorts of struggles, hurts, recovery from abuse, lots of stuff. Everything's all confidential and stuff but it lets you share about a lot of these personal things and get support from others. But...it's not doing anything for me. It's really awkward to sit in a room full of men and talk about how I hate being one because of the way men behave and because of our ugly gorilla-like hairy bodies. The point of it is to be supported by others in similar struggles. But, well, I really do seem to be alone there. No one in that place with similar struggles to mine.
Anyway. All that said... my masculinity has been bothering me a lot more in the last year or two. So, on the 27th of this month I'm going to a therapist to at least sort some of it out. I don't know if I'll be diagnosed as having gender dysphoria; I just want to be diagnosed if there is a diagnosis to be made...if that makes any sense. So that at least I can seek some ways to cope with it. So just...here to vent a little. Please wish me luck.