Okay, so. I realize I'm probably hijacking this thread and I honestly didn't intend on posting this at first, but some of the stuff I've read here really resonates with me.
Basically I have a similar problem as the OP. I'm older (24) but lately I've been thinking I have some issues around my gender.
To start at the beginning, as far back as I can remember I've wanted to be female. When I was very young I always pretended to be a girl during games, and while I played with stereotypical boy toys I also insisted on my parents buying me things like Polly Pocket (if anyone remembers those).
I realize stuff like this doesn't mean you have GID. But the feeling of wanting to be female has always persisted, usually shoved far to the back of my mind so I won't have to deal with it. Throughout my teenage years and up to the present I've viewed gender reassignment therapy as a desirable fantasy. A few years ago my mother was talking about SRT after it came up in a conversation and she jokingly said that it wouldn't work for me because I look too masculine. I was absolutely devastated.
There are things about me- the fact that I have a soft voice, that I'm shy and emotionally sensitive- that I feel ashamed of as a man. I've often caught myself thinking "If I was a woman I wouldn't have to feel ashamed of this". I often think of myself as looking quite feminine to the point where I can get quite a shock when I look in the mirror and see that I'm not. I have yet to have any sexual experience at all- because I want to have sex as a woman. I've even tried cross-dressing a few times, but that just made me hyper aware of how non-feminine my body is.
I don't want to over-state things here so let me be clear that these feelings aren't constant. A long time can pass without me thinking like this, and while there are some elements of my masculine body I dislike, there are others I like (some of my facial features for example, or sometimes I think growing my facial hair looks attractive while other times it looks repulsive). That makes me doubt that I should really be thinking about switching sex at all.
The reason I wrote this post is because I saw something while lurking in a different thread that was a massive hallelujah moment for me:
QuoteI felt like a "nonentity," which is a common self-perception of transsexuals.
This describes perfectly how I've felt for most of my life, and very strongly ever since the age of 19 or so.
I realize this is rambling (like I said, didn't intend on writing this at first) so to get to the point..... I'm scared of doing something about this. I'm scared that I'm too masculine looking to be a woman, or people will tell me I'm just going through a phase. Most of all I'm scared that I'll be told I don't qualify for SRT and the possibility will be gone for good.
Not even sure what I'm looking for here. I guess I just wanted to write all this and here if it sounds familiar to anyone else. Thanks for listening.
