Hello, everyone! I am questioning my gender and am looking for an active information hub and support site. I found this one yesterday, decided to join, and we'll see where it goes from there! You can skip to the last paragraph if you don't want to read my quick bio
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My story is rather strange (at least, in my opinion). During my childhood (probably up to around 15 years old), I would sneak and cross-dress into my sister's and cousin's dresses/clothing occasionally, but always in secret, and with great attention to detail so that I could replace everything perfectly how it was in order not to be caught. I didn't know why I was doing it, but that didn't really matter. It felt good for some reason. All other aspects of my life were perfectly fine for the boy I was.
8th grade rolls around and I decided to take my feminine side to a whole new level--anywhere online, be that games or message boards, I would just tell people I was female. It felt better to be referred to as such and treated that way. I made friends as a girl that I kept for
years. I went so far down this rabbit-hole that I ended up hurting several people I actually cared about when they found out I was lying about who I was (this happened shortly into my first year of college...I kept the act up that long). In their defense, I was using photos of one of my sister's friends because I needed something besides just me saying so to prove I was a girl at first, and I was like 14. It wasn't a good idea.
10th grade rolls around, I get into online console gaming. Uh-oh, voice chat... how will I prove to these people that I'm a girl here, too?? Easy--just Google it and see if a guy can sound like a girl. Well, what do you know, there are these people called "transgenders" who can practice and pull off pretty good female voices! So I learned how to do it (age 16-ish at this point). All the while living my real life as a guy and, anywhere online, I was this girl persona I had created. Which was actually still me, they just thought I looked like a pretty girl. Being able to talk to them with a female voice sealed the deal--I was who I said I was..right? (I can still do the voice-swap, by the way)
Freshman year of college: I joined a military school because I was really not sure what I wanted to do in life. This school was different from service academies that I could participate in the military training environment, but if I didn't join a specific branch of ROTC, I would not commission into the military upon graduation. But it was still military school (uniforms every day, salute flag going up every morning, the whole package). I graduated a month ago and never did join an actual ROTC detachment, but I stayed in the cadet program all the way through.
It was at the end of my first fall semester that some of my online friends found me out. Well, only one found me out, and he spread the word (and it was through some crazy detective work too). He couldn't find any record of a person with the name I was using at my university (their student lists are public with names, a fact I was unaware of). I basically wanted to call it quits with this faking-being-a-girl thing, to try and straighten out my life and get "back to reality." I sent all my closest online friends the same long and emotional message saying that I was dropping everything and enlisting in the Marines, and had no intention of ever coming back to the online realm (this was so they would at least have something to explain why I suddenly disappeared).
The friend I had gotten the closest with over the past many years replied with a cheeky reply: "Well, if I ever run into a young Marine named (insert my actual male name here), I will be sure to catch up with you."
WHAT. HOW DID YOU KNOW? My heart sank, almost got physically ill over feeling caught like this. Basically, he pieced it together over the course of about the past 6 months through various clues once he had his first tip-off, which was a very stupid oversight on my end regarding friend's lists on various social media platforms and being able to see who other people have added. It was some
serious detective work, was a very very small lapse in my coverage (he linked it together basically by 1 person who I didn't even really talk to). This guy really wanted to know why after 7 years I had never shown live video or met up with anyone who lived even remotely close to me. And he finally got his answer.
After that fiasco, I got my wish and dropped contact with all of them. All of those friends were now nothing but a memory. I carry on with college, and finally finished last month.
My more recent questioning activities have been similar relapses of telling people online that I am female, and using a fake photo. My current persona I started in January of this year and I am already sick of lying again. I can use my voice with them all I want, and they can like me for who I am all they want, but I still have to lie because of how I look. I want to stop this.
Why do I keep doing this? Am I trans? I don't know. The thought of being trans scares me. I live in rural Virginia. My family are all southern Baptist and conservatives. I cannot predict how well they would react if I were trans. I am not particularly unhappy with my real-life self right now, and I don't know if I would be happier if I were female in real life.
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So here is what I am going to do: talk to you all here. Try to find myself. I have been seriously considering doing some cross-dressing again, just to see if I would even look remotely okay as a female (can't tell if I'm shallow because I want to look good or not, lol). Starting with makeup and wigs, I guess. I don't want to be a glamour drag queen.. I just want to see, if taken seriously, I could pull off being a girl. I know my voice passes no problem, so appearance is all I have to focus on.
I hope to find help and support here! From what lurking I've done so far, you all seem very welcoming and helpful. Thanks for the read, and I'm looking forward to being involved here. Feel free to ask any questions or open any sort of discussion, I think it would help to talk about it all!
Take care
