This ended up being longer than expected, I'll put some keywords in bold before each of the important paragraphs to let you know what they are about, you can choose to read only some of them and reply to them if you don't have much free time. The first paragraphs are introductory, you can skip them.

For those who don't know me, I am too shy, I was afraid of starting this thread and I am afraid of the replies I may get (if any). I have had this tab opened for about an hour and at the time of writing this line I haven't posted this yet.

I have to admit I am afraid, I am afraid because I don't know where to begin, I have no solid plan and the future is uncertain. It scares me not knowing what is going to happen, having no control over the results and not knowing if the results will be good or bad. I am talking about the whole thing, hrt, social transition and surgery/ies.

This post seems like something in between cry for help and rant, if it does not belong on these forums please delete it.

My first problem is the social transition, this is like a catch 22 situation. I'm afraid of socially transitioning, coming out and presenting as female because of my body. But I need to socially transition to be able to have a successful physical transition. Each problem feeds the other one, I don't see an easy way out.

Mom: She's one of my barriers. I still live with her and I doubt I'll be able to move anytime soon, buying a house/apartment or renting is not cheap and I can not afford to waste my money on that when I can live relatively for free here. She knows about this, she said she will not oppose to what I want to do but at the same time she pushes back all the time and tries to reinforce and remind me of my male identity all the time. I think that the right solution for this problem is beginning to live a more feminine life inside the house and letting her see that this makes me happier.

Clothes: To begin solving my problem above I should begin by buying some less masculine clothes. The problem is, I am afraid of talking about this with my mom. I'm not sure if I need a solution coming from anyone reading this, I think I need encouragement more than anything else, I need someone to tell me "you can't do it" and that way I will be challenged to do it.

Friends: They don't get a hint. I haven't come out to them yet but I tried giving them hints even though I know this rarely works. It isn't working, I have asked literally what dresses I should wear or if I should wear lipstick. I have pretended to flirt with one of my male friends in public. Nothing, zero results, I guess that the only solution is telling them. But before telling them I should solve the previous things I mentioned, mom and clothes. I think it will be easier for them if the changes are gradual, for example if one day I begin wearing more feminine jeans and t-shirts (I'm already wearing gender neutral clothes), then another day I can paint my nails and finally the day I tell them they may reply with "I knew it for a long time". It may shock them less this way.

Lack of information: This one is another of my problems, there is zero information for the place I live on the web but this won't really be a problem if I can solve the previous three, why? Because with the previous three problems solved I won't be scared of asking for information in real life instead of waiting for it to appear on the web.

Everybody has to start somewhere and one of the things that cost me about 5 years was the lack of access to information on how to do it. People shouldn't criticize you for asking the questions that we all did and if they do, hit that report to moderator button on the post and we will take care of it. Nobody on the forms will know if you hit the button or if we found it in our review of the posting history. Most of the time when the report button is used, it's by a moderator as the start of a report.

We have a beauty section of the site where you should be able to get most of your questions answered on how to do it yourself. Friends and family are a bit more difficult to deal with and there is no magic solution we have found. In my case, it took years of effort on my part to show my mother that this was something I had to do. It's possible your mothers will start helping you even if she hasn't fully accepted it but that will be in the future.

The job ahead of you is huge but you need to pick one part and start working on it. You may do more than one part at a time if you wish. The list includes therapy, hair removal, developing your feminine look, accumulating a wardrobe, voice training, mannerism, makeup and anything else you might think of. We are here to give you information when you don't know where to go but you will need to do a fair amount of the work yourself. It's a bit more complicated by the fact that you desire to be stealth on the web so providing local resources is a bit more difficult for us.

Thank you, I didn't know about the beauty section (to be honest I never scrolled past the international section, I didn't notice the site continued after it, my attention span is too short). While I want to be stealth on the forums I have noticed that you have an IRC network. I may be a little more open there due to the fact that IRC, unlike forums, is not stored permanently on the web and indexed by search engines.

I don't feel ready to do more than one thing at a time until I build enough confidence. I think clothes should be that initial "training stage" I need before I have enough confidence. I am not a makeup person, I prefer to not depend on it, nail polish may be the only thing I would like to use, I have used it a few times before and it is not difficult.

Since clothes are where I want to begin and I know that my mom will see them I prefer to talk with her about buying clothes before I buy them. I don't want to do this secretly but I don't know how to talk with her about this, how do I start a conversation about buying clothes without scaring her too much?

How old are you if you don't mind.

Some people are more comfortable in Chat but help may be limited to whoever is on at the moment. The forums may be a bit slower but currently there is about 10 years of posting stored on the server. I spend little time on Chat because I don't feel I can produce a detail enough reply in the time allowed. On the forums I may mark a post unread, think about it and return latter to make my reply.

I don't have a good solution for your mother but I suggest you do a little homework by looking at what women your age are wearing and decide what would work for you. Mark some pages in a catalog or print some images off the web that you think might work for you and then suggest to your mother that she might like to look at what you have. You might be refused but the fact you are going to purchase something might get an opinion from her.

As for the site, there are many areas and some like sexuality aren't visible until you reach 15 post. The moderator area isn't visible unless you are a moderator and so on. For a while when I was new to being a moderator, it sometimes took me a while to figure out where to move threads that were in the wrong place.

Thank you for the advice, I'll try looking for some clothes online. You are right about the Chat and that I may get better and more answers on the forum, I think I should wait some time until I have enough confidence to ask here. Since I'm still getting used to the terminology, what are "posts"? On some forums posts are the threads an user starts, on others they are the replies, here threads seem to be called topics. This is different on each forum I visit.

Topic and threads are the same thing. A post is an entry or remark  in a thread made by a single person - - - unless a moderator get a hold of it.    To complicate matters, it's possible to change topics in the middle of a thread but nobody in the public area ever does it. For special reasons, we do it in the moderator area  but those reasons don't occur in the public area.