Hello to anybody who might be reading this. I've watched your community from afar for a few months. I hope I can now add to it myself.
An introduction. I'm not sure how to do this. I don't want to pour a mountain of details on you which you don't want to hear, but at the same time, I really need to tell this story somewhere. I guess I'll just give you the Cliff's Notes version. If it ends up overlong, forgive me.
I'm 27 and was born male, and I'm currently a college student. I grew up in what I'll simply call a less than functional family, one that consistently checked most of the "bad things" check-boxes that can happen to a child. I suppose I had my share of blessings too. Academic pursuits came very easy to me, and I eventually developed a social style which made it very easy to make friends. Though both of these boons mostly just served to make it easy to pretend I was OK as a kid.
I finally admitted to myself that I liked guys when I was about eighteen. For about the next seven years, I entered into quite a few "relationships." It took me a long time to realize what I was actually doing to people. The only thing I was really good at in a relationship back then was reading people and figuring out what they wanted. And I didn't know anything else to do but give it to them. So to some of them, I was basically just a toy they played with every other week. To others, I became the soulmate they had always been looking for, since I was "perfect." And in the latter case, after several months, I would become so terrified of an actual relationship that I'd simply disappear with no word or trace, and they'd never see me again. I've probably seriously hurt some people along the way like that.
The bottom line is that I really had no idea who I was or what I wanted. It sounds weird, but I basically lived most of my life until I was 25 with no identity and no desire, beyond the forementioned ineffectual grasps at love and affection. But that was the age when I started to climb out. I started to actually realize the mistakes I was mistaking, and I started to change them. And a big turning point came when I met somebody who actually knew how to deal with the real me. I became so numb at such an early age that he was essentially the first person I had loved in 20 years. I'm still with him. So over the last two years, I've been going through the struggle of going from looking like a normal person on the outside to actually being one on the inside. And while this process has been enormously difficult, I've been making progress. I feel like my life has finally turned a corner for the better.
And that's kinda the problem. I always dreamed that I'd get a better life, and it would be like taking an instantly effective Happiness pill, where my past would simply disappear. In reality, now that I've started to get a taste of real happiness and stability, all the things I could conveniently ignore when I was living day to day are now coming back to me.
So, I was born male, and I don't really know what I actually am on in the inside. Physically, I've always had slightly girly features, and I'm probably closer to a girl than guy in terms of body fat distribution. When a boyfriend said I looked girly, I liked it. I always just figured I was a feminine gay guy, though. Now I'm really not so sure. I don't feel comfortable as I am. I don't look the way I want to look. There's a part of me which doesn't want to be halfway feminine, which doesn't want to act like a man in public. But I don't really know specifically what I want.
I'm here because I really want to understand what's going on, and I'm terrible about talking about this stuff in person. I'm a decent conversationalist until I have to talk about myself. When people press me on really personal issues, I sometimes I just shut down completely, to the point of not being able to say anything. I think my boyfriend knows, and he supports me when I do things like play around with girly clothes, but I don't know how to share or explore the specifics of how I feel with him or anybody else.
Anyway, that's me. Thank you for reading this. If you have any ideas or want to point me at anything, feel free.
