I've been lurking here for a month now, I figure it's time to be more active. So...introduction time!
My name is Anna. I'm 28, live in Seattle, and work as a software engineer.
Two months ago, if you had asked I would have said I was a straight male. I now feel like that was just reciting something that I had never really given conscious thought to. A little over a month ago, some circumstances conspired to cause me to question pretty much everything about myself, the biggest one being my gender. Over a few really confusing and painful weeks I accepted that I might be female. Thanks to lurking this forum, I followed advice to see a gender counsellor. At that point all I wanted was a real person to talk to who could help me figure out who I am, I wasn't thinking about transition or anything. That visit to the counselor was probably one the most nerve-racking things I've ever done, but in the end it helped a lot. There were two main takeaways. One was not to look for reasons for the way I am, because I kept trying and failing which was causing me to get really depressed. The other takeaway was to give myself time and just live with my identity for a while. So, that's what I've been doing since then.
In the beginning I was so afraid of the idea of transitioning that I tried thinking of my identity such that I could live without needing to transition. Feminine male, various forms of genderqueer, and even identifying as female but not caring if other people treated me as such. None of those felt right and I found that I do care that other people gender me as female. So I'm now comfortable with identifying as a trans woman, at least to myself. While transitioning is still scary to me, I'm feeling more and more that it is something I need to do in order to live a happy life. I'm lucky to live in a city that is pretty trans-friendly and to also have a family that (I believe) will be accepting. I'm still going to give this some more time, at least a couple more months, because I feel like this has happened so fast and I don't want to rush into permanently changing my life. Currently I'm coping by crossdressing full-time, although I keep it pretty subtle. Nobody has said anything yet, but I assume they think I suddenly became gay or something. That bothers me a little, but I at least feel like I'm doing something and that helps.
Anyway, thanks to everyone on the forum, I've found you all very helpful. I'll probably contribute more questions than answers for now, but I hope to help out more over time.
-Anna
