If this isn't okay then just delete the post.
I just need to put my feelings into words and maybe see if anyone else understands. I have nobody to talk to where I live and though I have expressed my feelings to a couple of my closest (female) relatives.. while they were supportive or at least not abusive, they also just don't seem to want to talk it out with me or put in the time to actually care beyond a few pleasant words.
I feel very much stuck. I'm 43, genetically male, but not at all happy with that fact. I grew up in a very conservative part of Central Texas .. surrounded by what you might call fundamentalist rednecks .. my step-father and his family included. Don't get me wrong he has been an excellent father, but not someone I ever felt like this was an issue I could speak with him about for fear of intolerance. My mother had her own issues and we were not the talking about our feelings types with each other.
I was aware that I was born wrong (how I felt at the time) very very young. I remember back in elementary school being aware of it, and even having to be corrected on it by teachers. I have a very clear memory of a teacher taking me aside and telling me how I should walk because how I walked wasn't "how boys do it.". My life is actually full of little events like that. Despite being stupidly tall (6' 5") and and I suppose you could say "big boned" and cable strong (skinny but muscular) I was always picked on because I didn't want to fight, I wore my emotions of the surface, and I was shy. I was also as an early teen sexually abused by a friend of my brothers.
All of this lead I think largely to in my adult life being a social outcast, suffering from severe social anxiety, and having destructively low self-esteem. To put it mildly .. I hate myself. I hate my body.. in fact literally everything about it. I am self-destructive.. not just cutting and self-harm.. which of course I do, but also things like I stopped taking care of myself a while ago and as a result got fat, with high blood pressure and so much so now that I don't even know how to correct it if I could. I am so far gone that I can't exercise really.
Because of depression and social anxiety and of course now health problems I can't hold down a job. That means I can't afford insurance which means can't afford therapy and never really have been able to. So I can't talk these things out with anyone in any official capacity. I have brought up the depression and social anxiety with my GP of course but don't feel at all comfortable talking to him about the gender identity issues.
Another issue I have is that despite feeling how I feel inside, I am on the outside a big, ugly male. Like I said, I am fat, I am 6'5", balding, and generally every horrible thing puberty can do to you when you don't want to be male it did to me. My entire body disgusts me. I have had more than a few thoughts of self-mutilation but stopped myself cause it would be lethal. I think in fact that repulsion has a quality of transference because I don't particularly like being around men. In fact somewhat stupidly on a level I feel afraid around them. I bring this point up because the fact that I am an ogre, and that I don't feel safe or comfortable talking to men leaves me looking to women for emotional comfort which with my body ends up making me look like a creep to them. In short, I am pathetic and alone.
With no job, ability to hold one, and a body like a monster any hope of transitioning is pretty much non-existent for me. I will never feel like I belong anywhere and never have the acceptance I seek and the older I get the harder it is becoming to keep wanting to go on. I want to fix the things I hate about myself but it is so hard to do when you are isolated and alone. I need help but I have nowhere to go.
Anyways. There. That's all that. I needed to get it out. Don't feel any need to comment but if you want to know that I do deeply appreciate it. Hell at this point I will just take the attention and knowledge that someone took the few minutes it took to read this and care on some level. So thank you.
