I don't even know where I'm actually at at this point. I keep crying but I'll try to be as detailed as I can here. I'm light of frame but very masculine. By midlife I've become very good at being a boy and it doesn't cause me terrible suffering to be one on most days. Some days it even feels right, but a lot of days it just feels all wrong. I don't hate my penis with a rabid passion, but I resent my lack of breasts and hips and I'm ashamed of my acrid masculine smell. I don't hate my face (it looks like my mothers), but I dislike it's masculine cut and appearance and it's stubble makes me nauseous. Some days I have to wear a skirt (even if I never leave the house in it), and some days I'm expertly comfortable in my jeans and hiking boots with a sweater. I don't hate the way I look in a blazer with a fitted shirt or even a full suit (I've actually been gifted with fairly good looks), but I dream of looking half as good in an evening gown and feeling the rightness of it. I'm growing my hair out for the first time in 20 years but I don't hate it short I just don't know how to make it not boyish. However I have always despised my body hair and have never allowed surrendering to it even be an option from the very first days that it began to take over everything from my nose to my toes like an unkillable fungus. I feel like an actual woman some days (more so the more time that passes), and I look like a very tired middle aged man all the time and I'm sort of OK with that in a strange and sad way. My lack of complete physical dysphoria makes me doubt my urges to be seen more womanly and I constantly question what I'm doing. Am I trans, am I non binary, am I genderfluid, am I just a pathetic man with some sad form of ->-bleeped-<- having a midlife crisis? I've always imagined myself a woman mentally, and i dressed up like one often as a young child (before I was too old to 'playing dress up') but these questions cause me more dysphoria than my actual body. And the thought of leaving the house presenting as my feminine self terrifies me like a spider in my hair, but the thought of never knowing who I am and living in fear/regret the rest of my days breaks my heart. I cry when I watch coming out stories whether they are little girls, middle aged women, or men shedding their feminine husk they make me loathe myself for not trying hard enough to truly know and be myself. Just reading Susan's story made me remember being 9 and being angry at god for making me a boy only to relent and embrace being one anyway and i started crying again. In spite of it all I'm not mentally ready to be Rae yet...more crying.
I'm married to a wonderful man who is my soulmate, who knows I'm exploring my gender expression but still might lose sexual interest in me if I decide I truly need to live as a woman because he is only attracted to men and that terrifies me as well. I want to simply "be" what I feel and that doesn't seem possible. I never think of suicide, but I do break down and cry (especially when I put on makeup and see how sad a spectre I make) and I do wish sometimes to go to sleep and simply not wake up and have to face tomorrow in this skin. And while I don't hate myself completely I definitely love a different me more. Please God, tell me I'm having a bad dream and that I will wake up tomorrow with but a foggy and fading memory of my confusion and fear.
So I'm terrified and confused and sure that I have no clue at all what I am doing, but I'm sticking my toes in and seeing if the water dissolves my periwinkle polish or turns it bright crimson red. I'm lost and could use some finding. Hi Everyone! Respond, DM, whatever. If you recognize my location or know what's behind door number 2 I'm interested in corresponding even though I think I'm going to vomit and faint just from pressing "post". Hopefully my husband doesn't find me on the bathroom floor with acid breath and runny mascara and a language reduced to sup supping.
