Thank you all for your responses and kind words.
I've been struggling to find a therapist for a couple years, part of the problem is money, because I don't have health insurance, and part of the problem is that I live in Alabama.
But I recently found a community psychiatry program that appears to be affordable, my first appointment with my therapist is actually coming up next week. While I am not optimistic that they are necessarily qualified as a gender therapist, they do appear to take me seriously because they've already set up an appointment with an endocrinologist, before I have even met the therapist.
Someone asked why I would even think about " ->-bleeped-<-", I can answer that, but I hope I don't offend anyone. Also, I hope I don't hijack my own post into a debate about this. I am aware that many people would use it as a weapon to say that transgender women are never real, but I consider that both may exist separately. The distinction, according to a post elsewhere by a transwoman named Dianna, is that if you have ->-bleeped-<-, it is mostly part of your masturbation fantasy, and after your masturbation has concluded, all of your feminine feelings disappear instantly and completely. Until the next time. And the truth is, that does somewhat describe my experience. I feel "feminine" all the time, and only occasionally become aroused enough to need to engage in "masturbation" activity. But the activity always includes the fantasy, and immediately afterwards I always feel really awful, and immediately think "what the heck is wrong with me," and "what the heck am I doing to myself." It's not only a feeling of intense shame or guilt, it actually seems like a feeling of intense clarity. As if for just a brief moment afterwards, I am completely and totally sober, and the rest of the time I was under the influence of some drug. During that brief moment of sobriety, I wish I could keep that clarity continuously at all times. Essentially cure myself of dysphoria and the need to transition. But then when the sobriety fades, when the drug is back on, I begin to feel the dysphoria again, the need to transition again, and I fear and avoid the unsustainable clarity that brings guilt and shame. So I've sort of developed an artificial "asexual" attitude to avoid that moment afterwards. I haven't had a date, or so much as held hands for human contact, in 5 years, and another 5 years of celibacy before that as well. I have always felt this way, but only in my recent years have had the will to avoid it. I cast further doubt on my own legitimacy because I see parallels with this pattern, and certain aspects of the "sissy fetish".
For what it's worth, I will note a couple other aspects of my experience that might not be typical.
My earliest memory, it's not dated so I do not know if it is before puberty, is a memory of hating my male parts. The hatred and disgust for those parts was not necessarily accompanied by a desire to be a girl. And not necessarily a feeling of not being a boy. Simply, I hated the parts between my legs. I think fairly quickly though, the desire to have girl parts replace the boy parts did become part of it. Though perhaps not initially. And from the earliest time I had access to the internet, I was researching sex reassignment surgery. But perhaps the weird thing is, I didn't necessarily think I wanted to be a girl in whole and in life. I had no real desire to wear girls clothing or makeup, and I didn't even want breasts. I didn't know HRT was a thing, somehow I had missed that and only knew about the surgical aspect. So I simply wanted to get the SRS and replace my boy parts with a girl parts, but then to continue living normally as I had been, not taking a girl named and wearing girl clothes and wearing makeup and all of the other aspects of femininity that transgender women feel the need to master. I didn't need people to use female pronouns with me, or even recognize me differently. It would just be a difference under my clothes that only I knew and cared about. Basically I guess I just wanted to be a boy with a vagina, but I never actually put it in such thoughts or words until now. I suppressed that because of how ridiculous and inaccessible it was. But then somewhere in my late teens or early twenties, when I failed continuously in my attempts to get a girlfriend or even a date, I promised myself, if I don't find my soulmate by the time I am 30, I will give up and get the SRS I've always wanted. Needless to say, my twenties flew by much faster than I expected. And when I was was still scared to go forward, I just ignored it again for the next two years. Now I'm 32, I have only recently educated myself about the very word "transgender" and all that it implies and entails. And I'm seeking professional help to talk about these things, and also as a step to receiving the HRT. But as I doubt that my therapist will have an in-depth knowledge of a broad variety of experiences, it seems like there was a better chance that someone here could recognize whether this is typical for transgender women or if it means something else. ( like a non-binary thing?)
