Hi y'all, I'm new here. My name is Zachariah, I'm 23, and I just recently realized that I might be trans (MtF, still consider myself Male for now). I've been thinking a lot about it for a couple weeks now, but I have a tendency to overthink things, and need some outside perspectives to help me sort it all out. I don't want to come out to anyone I know until I know for sure I'm trans (my family is pretty conservative and religious, so even a false alarm would irreparably alter relationships). From what I've read on the subject already, I hear that the act of just thinking about things this much is usually a sign that it's true, but I want to be sure. Here goes.
First, a little bit of background on me for context. My father is fundamentalist Christian and hardcore conservative (so is my stepdad), but my mother is pretty open minded and willing to change her views and opinions if provided sufficient evidence to the contrary. I don't remember most of my early childhood (10ish and younger), but I was pretty sheltered and antisocial through my teenage years (probably why I never noticed gender dysphoria). The years when I first noticed myself maturing emotionally were dominated by World of Warcraft (8 hours a day, almost every day), which is where I learned most of my initial social skills (and cemented my status as an eternal nerd). I should rewind for a second, though; my parents divorced when I was young (I don't remember it being particularly hard on me or anything, but it's a thing that happened), and I was mostly raised by my mother, while visiting my father on weekends. I'm honestly grateful that it was my mother who raised me, because with my tendency toward extremes, I would be a Nazi right now if she hadn't. But I'm getting all over the place now. I stopped playing World of Warcraft when I started college (online Game Design Bachelor's program), but I ended up switching majors halfway through (Creative Writing for Entertainment, mix of on-campus and online), and even after graduating I still don't know what I want to do for a living (I took Creative Writing because it was easy and I wanted to at least leave with a degree in something). The on-campus part of college lasted for 9 months in Orlando (awesome place to live if you have the money, I'd still be there if I could afford it), and since then I've been living with my mom and stepdad in rural Pennsylvania (yuck).
The last few years have been a lot of change for me, as I've been growing emotionally, rationally, and ideologically as I figure out who I am. Because of this I consider myself to have been a child (at least, of sorts) until I moved to Orlando when I was 20. The first big identity change was in late 2015 when I converted to Roman Catholicism. The second, probably more significant, was in spring 2016 when I discovered Bernie Sanders. Prior to that I was Republican Conservative by default, since that's what my dad was. Anyway, I started looking into his platform and it suddenly hit me: "Wait a minute, I agree with all these things. Holy ->-bleeped-<-, I'm actually a liberal!". I backed Bernie pretty hard in the primaries (went to rallies, donated to the campaign every week, etc.), but the whole time I was slowly becoming more and more disillusioned with capitalism and the Democratic party, to the point that when Bernie lost the nomination to Hillary, I just gave up on it and started looking for alternatives. I found just that in the Green party and their eco-socialist message, which quickly led me to straight up socialism and eventually Communism (yeah, I'm a Communist, please don't hate me). After studying Communism a bit I started to realize that most of my pre-conceived beliefs about things like economics, religion, and the LGBT community were complete bull->-bleeped-<-, so I started questioning all of it and looking into their communities to learn more (mostly just lurking in facebook groups). This led me to realize I was bisexual (oh, yeah, I'm also bi), and once I was able to admit that to myself, it opened the floodgates. Suddenly anything goes, right? Anyway, a few weeks ago I found the page "Assigned Male Comics" on facebook, which also led me to "Life of Bria Comics" (go read them, they're awesome), both of which led me to question whether I'm cisgendered at all. And that's where I'm at now. I've been rambling for a while, so we should probably get to the meat of this now, yeah?
I guess I should start with the things I think might be gender dysphoria. One of the big ones would be depression. My brother, sister, and I, as well as my dad all have depression. I didn't realize that I did until, like, a week ago, since everyone else's is caused by trauma of some sort and is the "existence is pain" kind of depression. Mine is more of just general apathy (and sometimes emotional disconnection, like I have only a minor emotional reaction to things that should be much more impactful), and also has no immediately obvious cause (I haven't suffered any major trauma that I'm aware of). This leads me to think that it might be due to gender dysphoria, as my family would never have considered that option.
A more minor bit of evidence is that I often have a hard time relating to other men, while I've noticed that I think more like a woman than a man. Well, specifically, I think more like my mom than my dad. My dad and I can see the same thing and come to completely different conclusions about it, while my mom and I can often finish each other's sentences. A case could be made that this is just because I spent more time with my mom growing up, but I figured it might be something to consider.
The next one is probably my most compelling bit of evidence, but it has to do with my sexuality. I'll try to keep out anything graphic, but it might get a little weird, so head's up.
For just about as long as I can remember, I have found the idea of men turning into women arousing. Like, it's really hot. It's easily my biggest fetish. Being raised in a very religious household, I thought it made me a pervert. Sometimes the thought of me turning into a woman crossed my mind, but I always rationalized it away, thinking I was masturbating too much and that I just let my kink get to my head. In light of the things I've learned about trans people, however, I'm starting to wonder if it was the other way around. Maybe my mind is actually female, but since I didn't know how any of that worked, it manifested as a sexual kink because my freshly pubescent sub-conscious didn't know what else to do with those feelings. Having come to that conclusion, I recently tried masturbating while picturing myself as the woman and - WOW - let's just leave it there. At any rate, the more I think about it, the more this theory makes sense to me.
And now that the weirdness is out of the way, the most conclusive piece of evidence:
Part of me really, really, wants this to all be true. I've heard that's all you really need, but another part of me is terrified of what might happen and that I might be wrong. It's like half of my brain is like "Hell yeah, let's do this!" while the other half is like "Are you ->-bleeped-<-ing insane!?" while the rest of my body is like "This isn't helping!".
Anyway, I think I might have answered my own questions, but I guess I just really need to hear it from someone who isn't me: based on what I've said, am I actually a transgender woman, or am I overthinking things and attributing random symptoms to a nonexistent problem?
TL;DR
I think I might be trans, but it's a scary thought. How do you know for sure if you are trans?
Thanks for all your time people, and sorry for rambling, I just needed to get this off my chest.
P.S. Please no comments about me being Communist, or how terrible Communism supposedly is. I highly doubt anything you say would change my mind about it, and it's not really relevant to my main question anyway. I only mentioned it because it's part of the catalyst for me realizing I might be trans.
