Hello everyone. I feel like I need to rant a bit about my situation and I may be posting a lot to read. I'm a 19 year old (will be 20 in a month) biological male, and all throughout my life I've felt desires to be female to varying degrees depending on the time of my life they occurred. I remember things like pretending I was a female character in Disney movies and such when playing with my younger sister. Until recently, I've been somewhat content in playing transgender interactive fiction games and claiming to be female on online games. I actually got to the point where these was the primary and in some ways sole methods of getting joy in my life, and I've felt increasingly withdrawn from social situations as I've gotten older. I'm still at that point in a way now, but I feel like these 2 things aren't cutting it anymore. Anyways, more to the point.
I now feel like I'm at a point where actually becoming a recognized, passable, and hopefully attractive female in reality will be the only thing that will open the door for a fulfilling life for me in the near future. I've suffered from depression in the past from various things that I was able to overcome on my own or that went away on its own, but this depression that is lingering and increasing now is definitely from my desires to be female. I've even thought about suicide, but I've largely put those thoughts aside now. When I do my normal routine of playing games now, the whole time I think things like "I wish I could be myself in real life" and I also think about how doing such things are simply illusions that I'm using to distract fro my true feelings.
Anyways. Unfortunately, I don't think coming out is a good idea for me. I've been living as someone who I am not for a long time. As much as I would love to come out to relieve the built up tension, I really don't think it's an option. I really believe I was cursed with the bad luck my dad's side of the family seems to have. Besides being born the wrong gender, I was born into an extremely conservative and baptist family in deep south Georgia. 2 of my aunts do have gay sons though. One defends her son adamantly from hostility from the rest of the family and they live in Florida, the other aunt lives isolated with her son in north Georgia. As far as I know, there are no other transgender members of any side of my family. The only person I've told is my sister. We had sort of a mutual exchange of coming outs
she came out as bi a while ago, and I came out as trans to her today, and she was understanding. She's too scared to come out to anyone else about that too. But the people I live with (my dad and my grandmother from his side) show an intense hatred for anyone who isn't hetero or anything that isn't standard for men and women. Coming out as an agnostic damaged our relationship pretty badly alone. I am by no means financially independent so far and I haven't even had a job yet primarily because of severe social anxiety, but I am not too far away from being finished with my degree at tech college and I want to do something so badly about this that I think I can kick social anxiety aside.
My grandmother on my mom's side is probably the next best person after coming out to my sister that I could come out to. I've spent more time with her than my mom and dad and she loves me more than my mom and dad I believe. She's also helped me financially with different things in the past. She bought my car that I can't drive very well, she bought most of the video games I had from my childhood, and she even bought a shampoo for me when I was around 15 when I was convinced I was balding already, though she did that with skepticism (100% sure I'm going bald now though lol, but I'm pretty confident things can be done about that in the future if I'm able to/when I transition). The problems with her are that she's always considered me her little boy, so it would shock her pretty badly. She's also unpredictably liberal in some of her views and conservative in others, so I have no idea how she would feel about transgender individuals. It's even harder to tell since I pick around and ask her about such things and she gives me weak answers. She also can't keep secrets very well :\. So I guess with coming out to her, I'd either get support and understanding and carry the risk of her letting my secret slip, or she would shun me like everyone else and definitely tell my secret, possibly getting me disowned and landing me on the streets.
Anyways, that's my rant in short. If anyone has advice on what to do, I'd appreciate it as well. I'd love to know if I should take the risk of coming out to my grandmother and possibly get a transition moving much sooner (the sooner the better I've read) or if I shouldn't due to the reasons listed. I do know that while I'm stuck as I am now, I'm probably going to continue feeling like becoming female is what my passion is all going to, the happy and sad of it. Everything else in my life has increasingly been only getting apathy from me while my feelings on my gender have gotten considerably stronger. But yeah, it's nice to be part of a community I can relate to now at least
