Hi, I've been a member for a week or two, but don't think I've posted an intro, so here goes...
I'm a 45 year old pre-T, pre-any surgeries FTM. I knew from a very young age that I was supposed to be a boy – at least by age 7.
I've lived my adult life as a butch lesbian. I've been out since I was 21. I haven't owned any women's clothing since I started buying my own clothes. In my relationship with my last girlfriend, I told her that I wanted to be a man. She was super supportive, and I started binding and packing, and essentially living as a man with her, but ultimately was too afraid of discrimination in this conservative city, never moved forward with any transitioning, and pretty much buried the dream of becoming who I felt like I really was.
Now, 10 miserable years later... 10 years filled with being nearly constantly depressed and suicidal... the subject of gender identity/gender dysphoria came up with my psychiatrist that I've been seeing for about 5 years. He was asking me about my masculinity, and I said I was just more comfortable being masculine, and pretty much dismissively added that I always thought I should have been born male. To him it was a huge aha moment about my treatment-resistant depression, and my 20-minute appointment went on for an hour and a half, and I left with a referral to a gender therapist he works with.
I've been seeing the gender therapist for about three months now – absolutely love her. I've been in therapy since I was 17, and I have told this woman SO many things that I've never talked about in therapy before – ever. I even stopped seeing my regular therapist that I've been seeing for 15 years, and am seeing the gender therapist for everything. I've started binding and packing again, even at work. I changed my gender on Facebook – first to gender-nonconforming, then to transgender. I agonized over the pronoun for a long time, and since I'm only out to maybe half of my Facebook friends, and I have coworkers and family on here I'm not ready to be out to yet, I settled on the gender neutral "they" for now. It's not right... but better than "she." I've pretty much settled on the name Joel, but am not at the point of using it much of anywhere except transgender forums yet. Dying to change it on Facebook, but again... those pesky coworkers and family members.
So. There's still a lot of fear about all this. But there's finally a little bit of hope, too, and it's been a long, long time since I've felt any hope. I'm really, really tired of wanting to die.
