I have denied 'it' for so many years.  It wasn't until I turned 40 years old that I finally realized that my secret of being transexual has been to much of a load to burden, and that transitioning was my only choice to being truly happy.  Do I regret that I waited so long to finally react?  For me, no.  While my life was difficult living as a male in that shell, I also had staged my future with the 'male benefit'.  I was able to secure a strong career which allowed me to secure a competitive income.  I feel that it is more difficult to do this as a woman.  While this may not be the case in all careers, it certainly was in mine.  Also, I have the ability to understand both a man's and a woman's point of view.  That can be a curse or a blessing, lol.  I feel there there is a case for transitioning early or late.  If you do transition later, then it's important to stay positive on the present. Yes, I might have missed out on some of the more youthful experiences, but I had some good experiences as a male too. My life before wasn't all doom and gloom. Dwelling on what could of been is of no benefit to oneself.  Transition when and if the time is right.

Weird moment today when my younger brother was watching a show on life in the 90s, and it got to the part about the gay pride stuff starting.. My whole family started making jokes about gay people, hurt my self confidence a bit.. But I have gotten used to laughing at offensive stuff.. still made me pretty uncomfortable. I find it funny that my older brother asked my younger brother if he wanted to tell the family something, but in reality I am the one they should be asking that.

Pretty sure my mom will be accepting at some point, even if it takes time, but she has always wanted a daughter.. Which by the way isn't one of the reasons I want to transition, I actually thought my mom wanted me to be some body building masculine guy.

Been thinking a bit about what I will eventually do about my name. I am obviously not going to use my user name here, since this is just a name I am mostly using to avoid having friends/family find me. Probably will either hope that my parents still remember what they were going to name me if I was born a female(I don't think they had actually picked a name for that case, think they said that they always thought I was going to be born a male), or just go for the name "Mattie" or something since it is similar to my first name of "Matthew".

You owe it to yourself to be yourself. If you have the means to see a therapist who will start the gender transitioning process, by all means do it if it is who you are. I am 42 years old now, and I am finally legally on HRT and under an excellent doctor's care and advisement. I wanted this for myself for the longest time and now that I have the health care and specialized doctor in my community to go to, I am a happy camper now. I know this is just one step forward for me, in terms of the physical transitioning "on paper" and/or in medical records to document my process. Looking back, I think there was a time in my early 20s when I was a branch in the road: one road lead to start honestly being who I was since my pre-K-12 years and the other road was to "be a man" or TRY to be a man in my case. Today, I'm closer to who I am inside and HRT is just part of me and the whole picture as a transgender individual (MTF). Peace.

First of all never, ever give up.  What you have read on this thread is mostly good advice  I would suggest that you go back and re-read it again, and think about each post and decipher the good, the better, and the not so good.

What you are considering is at best, a difficult undertaking.  Just how difficult depends on how smart you are and how well you are able to distinguish between 'good' choices, better ones, and 'not so good'.  Luck and fortune will also play a roll.

I think that if you spend enough time around these forums, you will find that there are a lot of people that will tell you that there are lots of ways to be 'trans', and that 'transition' is different for everybody.  They will tell you that there is no "right way" to transition.  In many ways they are correct, and it stands to reason; we are all different and we all start from a different set of circumstances ranging from age to socio-economic status.

I think what is important in your case is that you are young and you seem to have an excellent understanding of your current situation.  You appear to highly self aware and this is an extremely vital characteristic which in my opinion should be exploited to the MAX.  You need to clearly understand just who you are, and more importantly who you will become.  Once you have that clearly in your head, figuring out just how you plan to get there is easy by comparison.

Well, found out today that my dad is going to be working in a different area for 3 weeks, so he will only be coming home on weekends during that time.. But this has me thinking I could use it to my advantage, to find a good time to talk to my mom alone.

Edit: Just saw that the forum has a youth section now, interesting... Though probably a little late since I am technically an adult in just under a month.. I think...(still horrible with time). But, I like advice from older peoples who have much more experience than me, still cool realizing that there are in fact younger people going through similar situations to me.