So, I guess I should start by saying hi lol. I'm not gonna lie I been hesitating on the better part of a half hour trying to figure out how to word this. I wanted to give a proper intro, which in this case its going to be a long one so apologies in advanced.
To start off and to give a heads up I should say I was born a male and I am diagnosed with clinical depression and Bi-Polar Disorder. So needless to say really, my self esteem can be right out horrid. But my "story" more so of how everything happened is also what I am in confusion and conflict in my mind. It was watching an anime. There was an androgynous character I found cute. At this point in time which was back in October, I was going to the gym in the early morning and on the walk there I would tend to ponder things and this was one of them. My seemingly harmless attraction towards a character seemed to turn into an eventual jealousy. Which is what confused me. I never had such direct thoughts of wanting to be like that, Androgynous, or the opposite gender. It really wasn't much of a thought at first as I just thought it was a confusion between attraction and aspiration. But it eventually kept hitting me and then small little things in my life kind of I guess clicked in my mind.
Most the video games I played as of a few years back I would play females, or very feminine males. It felt more proper to me and I felt more comfortable in a female avatar. I always thought it was because of the "change in style" for me. At this point now I can't play a male character without feeling some kind of off feeling. To the point I actually deleted a fully leveled character and re rolled him as a female just to play the different gender.
Other things I looked at through my life, though small, kind of added up. I never really did things with "the guys" back when I was younger. When they went to play football I was so off put by it I never really did and when I actually went and did play with them, I felt so horribly out of place. I was, as I realize for what it was, jealous of girls to an extent. More so with how they were able to show themselves off with things like purses and such. Just the idea of carrying one around seemed like a thrilling idea to me but it was a thought quickly shoved into my head and just put in into the category of "Weird ->-bleeped-<- I Think That People Will Never Need To Know". Same went for makeup. Though this wasn't more of a development high school, where I started wearing eyeliner and nail polish. Granted I wore only black and I did try to fit into the heavy metal/punk scene, though I still felt enamored by it and smiled when someone said my eyeliner looked great. I did at one point where some lip liner smeared on my lip to give it a black hue but a teacher said something and I felt off to never do it again.
Also probably the age old question of "What would you do if you would be a woman?", or "Would you wanna be a woman for a day", etc. I can honestly say for all my life I would have either answered along the vague lines of "Be happy with it", and "Yes". Other times women would go and say "Oh well you would have to deal with having periods and those are the worst and you wouldn't wanna be one blah blah blah". While I won't dispute that periods I can only assume are horrible and can be painful, it never deterred me from wanting to still say yes and that I'd be willing to. Never really crossed my mind as to meaning this though.
Those are pretty much the prime examples I can think of. I feel like they were puzzle pieces that one couldn't really make out on their own as the picture was to obscure on each piece but that bit with the anime character was kind of the final piece putting the whole picture together but the picture is confusing and you aren't sure exactly what it is.
Jumping ahead a bit, I did talk to a gender queer coworker about everything I mentioned here really and he was nothing but helpful. He didn't judge me and just told me to "just be me". Most of my coworkers are actually on board with me about it and know I'm kind of exploring gender identity. Hell I even hold out a purse at work from my backpack when I'm there and they're all supportive of it.
Which leads to the next part because I didn't know what I wanted to be. Upcoming times I noted my increased want to be the opposite gender but then at times I would tell myself that being a guy is fine which horribly confused me. Here I am thinking I want to be a female but then here I go saying...you know I'm fine how I am. It put me into horrid crying fits at night where I would just tear continuously and couldn't sleep at all over the conflict in my mind. I also feel as though I'm not really what I think I want to be. I'm mixing attraction with aspiration. That since my self esteem is ->-bleeped-<- in terms of most of my life just be what I feel is beautiful and abandon what I can't stand to be. Hell, I even see people having these problems at the age of 5 or their early pre/teen years and here I am, 23 years old having a sudden epiphany if you would call it that, and I feel wrong to even say I'm possibly this while people have had these problems at such a young age. Granted I am planning on exploring this for a while, in years to come but I just feel wrong to say it at all so quickly. Which is why even in a place of acceptance I'm still scared that I'm going to get judged. I try to quickly pass these notions out of my mind but paranoia quickly sticks them back in.
I just honestly don't know where to go or what to do at times. I'm too self conscious to put make up on in public or even carry my purse out there. I feel as though I shouldn't bother to experiment with things at work in terms of makeup because I'm scared of how customers will perceive that normally come in and know as some metal headed dude and then all of a sudden the next day I have foundation on and such and I'm scared of the reaction. I truly would love to wear lipstick to work but I'm scared of how that would turn out even more. My close friends even better don't know any of this. Don't know how to break that to them.
Overall of this though as my current though. I would feel happy as a woman with some of my masculinity in tact still. I felt just saying "Hi, I'm blah, and I am a blah blah blah" isn't much of an intro for me and the site DID say...tell your story and I feel people won't understand fully unless you spill it. So either way thats me in a shortened nutshell. Apologies for the long amount of text and if any of it is kajumbled (most of it just poured out emotionally), I needed to get it of my chest and I hope my journey can bloom farther from it. Thanks for having me here.
