Hi. Thanks for taking the time to read this, grab some popcorn and settle in, this may be a long one...
So I'm 28 years old now. I have known something wasn't quite right since I was very young. One of my earliest memories is going to watch The Crystal Maze (with Richard O'Brian as host to show you how long ago that was) in my mums bedroom as my old man was watching TV downstairs. I used to do it every week, and every week I would dress in my mums underwear etc in the (semi) privacy of her room. At the time though I didn't understand what it all meant.
As time went on and gender stereotypes and expectations became clear I made a concerted effort to play my role in life as a boy, but still dressing up now and again and never really thinking what it actually meant.
One day when I was about 14 I was staying with my old man (parents divorced and I lived with mother) and we were up late with a couple of friends watching the Daytona 500 NASCAR race. It was maybe 0300 in the morning and they had drifted off so I went upstairs planning on sleeping. I was curious as to the contents of the locked cupboards in the spare room so I did a bit of exploring and found the cupboard key and lo and behold I came across a fairly substantial collection of womens clothes.
This never really bothered me knowing my old man liked to cross dress. By this point in life I had accepted that there was something very wrong with my sense of gender identity (to the point I had held scissors and knives against my "stuff" willing myself to cut them off so I had an excuse to go for surgery) but I could never tell him I knew what his secret was. IMO it was his private life and he can do what he likes.
So age 15 rolls around and I conclude that I must be transgender and so I do what any 15 year old who lives with his mother does. I planned on telling her and asking for help. Some dutch courage later and I tell her...
...she laughs, she tells me not to be so daft. That its just a phase etc. As I'm sure you can imagine this had a somewhat negative effect on me. Don't get me wrong, I love her dearly and I know she was only doing what she thought was right. But this sent me down a path of trying to cure myself. I got trophy girlfriends, fast cars, spent 4+ hours in the gym every day to make myself look manly and be surrounded by things that a man should be surrounded by. None of it helped. I still knew deep down something was very very wrong. But I managed to keep it subdued and try my best to live the lie that everyone thought I should live.
So here we are. 28 years old. 6 foot plus. Size 12-13 shoe size and in a very very dark place. My father killed himself last year. Was it money worries? mental illness? who knows, there was no suicide note. The 2 things I do know are 1 - he pre planned his suicide because one of the first things I did was go into the house to make sure nobody came across his stash of clothing, after all, he was dead now, why change the memories people had of him? However it was all gone. the cupboards were bare. He had destroyed it all himself knowing that people might find it after his suicide.
Secondly, and hardest to deal with, the only person I could ever plan to speak to within my support network, who would unequivocally understand what I was going through was gone. So as it stands today, I have a job I love, it took about 15 years but finally I have a job that I don't dread going to. However it is within a Christian organisation and I have seen the way that staff deal with trans women, its not that they are bad people, just most are very fundamentalist Christians who believe the bible is literal.
I have a girlfriend who I love and who loves me, she had to move down south as a condition of her dream job, but we make it work and I get to see her when I can. She knows I have some feminine qualities, but she would very likely not be accepting if I told her. Distance puts enough stress on our relationship without this revelation.
I have a small friends group. my 2 closest friends are very "alpha" and would definitely not take this well.
I am currently being treated for depression as a result of the suicide and am currently throwing 375mg of Venlafaxine down me daily. So I don't know how the doctor will take this.
And then there is my mum. we have already seen her reaction from 13 years ago, I cant see much having changed.
So from where I'm standing I see 2 options:
1 - Live a lie, be the man I am expected to be, probably deal with depression related to this for the rest of my life and without wanting to sound to melodramatic probably end up dead of suicide sometime in my 40s.
2 - Speak to the doctor. Most likely loose my friends, my girlfriend, my job and what is left of my family. But do what I have always knows was the right thing since childhood. However, due to my late start and hard work in the gym earlier in life probably never be what you could describe as "passable"
If you have stayed with this I thank you so much, have a cookie or a gold star.
TL;DR - Be who i want and loose everything or live a lie and die at 40.
