TRIGGER WARNINGS!
I cannot tell you what to do, I can only tell you my story and let you make your own decisions in life. I tried it the way you are thinking about and I ended up stuck on the far side of fifty years old, my parents medically incapacitated, and wondering why I threw most of my life away trying to make them happy when they didn't give me anything of value in return for it. And I spend a lot of time crying about it.
I kept my femme side deeply buried, to the point I had myself absolutely convinced that I was a guy, albeit a guy with a "feminine side." I lived the life my Dad told me repeatedly to live, the life he wanted me to live. I was the suit and tie guy, "Mr. Lawyer" driving the Mercedes, house in the suburbs, wife and kids, all the stuff that the Bible of the Church of the Big Man on Campus says you have to have to achieve a state of happiness and nirvana.
Well I didn't achieve nirvana. In my forties the stress of trying to have and hang on to all that stuff started giving me anxiety and panic attacks, and then it started to jack my blood pressure.
Six years ago at the age of 74, my Dad had a massive stroke that put him in a facility, half paralyzed and silenced by a trach tube in his throat.
I staggered on for a few years like a windup toy that didn't know enough to run down and stop working, and then I had that "Who the h*ll am I?" moment.
Now I am casting about, desperately trying to find shreds here and there of my female self, trying to knit myself back together into a cohesive whole that isn't some cobbled up construct based on what my father told me to be. Little things like, I wasn't the only boy in the flute section in school band. I really was one of girls. That was really me. Things like, I didn't grow my hair long in high school because of rock music. I grew it long because I wanted it that way. And when it made me look like a girl, there was nothing wrong with that.
And when I had to get it cut to get a part time job in college, well that just sucked.
Your life is yours to live. But I urge you to consider carefully just who you are living it for. And ask yourself if you are going to get anything back from those other people equal in value to what you will be giving up.
To this day, I know that if my parents were healthy, and I went to their house en femme, I would hear my father say "C***, you look ridiculous. What are you doing to yourself?"
But what I know is, when I dress femme, for the first time since puberty, I really like what I see in the mirror. And at the end of the day, that is what matters to me more than anything else.
