Dear Venusian,
My heart aches for you, as I know very well how you feel. First of all, you have nothing to apologize for. Your story may have something in common with many of us here, but yours is unique, because you are unique.
I will speak for myself, but please take some comfort in the fact that many of us on this forum have felt like you feel. I grew up as a very bookish "smart kid", National Honor Society and AP classes and all that stuff, but felt very limited socially. I liked girls, and I tried to be one of the guys, but I was terrified of my own thoughts - I wanted to *be* a girl, not just date one.
Now I am much older than you, and I went to high school in the 1970s. There was no internet, or any other place to talk about it, and really no such thing as "transgendered". There were those few sensationalized transsexuals like Christine Jorgensen, or Renee Richards, but they were regarded as freaks, not just as people with different expressions of gender and sexuality.
So I was scared to death to admit to anyone how I felt, and every single night I would go to bed and dream about being a girl. It was almost unbearable. But I did bear it, because I felt I had no choice. I grew up, went to college, started a career, eventually I got married and had children. Because that was what men did. And all the time I wanted nothing more than to be female. The secret cross-dressing. The unrelenting shame I felt. I thought I could "will it away". Sometimes I could suppress my desires for months, even years. But it always came back, stronger than ever.
You can take this path, or you can help yourself now. You are legally an adult. You don't need anyone's permission to see a therapist (although paying for it may be an issue, unless there is free counseling from a LGBT center or something similar). My suggesting would be to tell your parents that you feel unhappy with yourself, in some non-specific way, and ask if they would let you see a therapist. There are are gender therapists that also deal with many other family and developmental issues, so you don't have to say "I want to see a gender therapist." Just pick one who does both.
The one thing I would ask of you is to be kind to yourself. You are not a freak, or a pervert. There is nothing "wrong" with you. You are different, and your path may be difficult, but you are every bit as deserving of love and happiness as any cis-gendered person.
Wishing you all the best,
Terri
