So you're probably very used to this type of threads...I'm Charlie Nicki, I purposely chose a name that isn't a 100% male or a 100% female cuz it fits my confusion and how I feel about myself. Please bare with me (this might be long) and let me know if your experience is similar to mine, I could honestly use someone who is going through the exact thing I'm going through.
I'm biologically male, I'm 28 and I've been living as a gay man my entire life. When I was 20 I started feeling curious about androgynous and transgender people, Youtube was my gateway to get to know trans people from all over the world who were beautiful and brave enough to come out publicly. Back then it didn't really hit me that deep down my admiration came from a place where I wanted to do the same. I remember since I was very little I've always had a "parallel" life in my mind in which I was a girl, and basically always imagined myself going through everyday situations as a girl. Always fantasized about what would happen if I had gone through whatever situation I did in my real life (like a party or meeting new people or whatever) as a girl and always felt happy when these thoughts were in my mind. Back then I thought it was normal for any gay guy to be like this, and to like feminine things...I thought it was all part of my sexual orientation.
It wasn't until later when I discovered all these people in social media, that I realized there was something more in me, like a desire to be the other gender. I tip-toed around it and cross-dressed a couple of times in Halloween, it felt very liberating and I felt at peace. It was like I was finally able to be myself, to be as feminine as I wanted to without feeling bad about, without feeling repressed.
The thoughts about being a girl got stronger and stronger to the point where I felt it was exhausting for me to be thinking about that all the time, so exhausting and felt like a constant conflict in my mind between what I wanted and what I "had" to do. It got so unbearable for me that I started going to therapy at 25 years old. The therapist was a woman who had a lot of experience dealing with transgender people, I went there for around 4 months and honestly I don't think she helped much, I didn't really feel much chemistry between the 2 of us, I sort of felt judged by her. She didn't really do anything wrong, but I was hoping to get someone to guide and really tell me "you're not crazy, this is real" but it never happened, I kept feeling confused.
Back then I came out as trans with a few people including my mom, my boyfriend at the time and a close friend. My mom tried to be supportive but later told me it was something too difficult for her to handle (she's a great mom, she was just being honest), my boyfriend at the time basically told me the same, and said he didn't want to be with a girl (which I expected of course, he's gay, but still was hard to hear it). I think at the time I wasn't ready to handle people's rejection and both their reactions really put everything in perspective for me...Is this something I really want to do? Is this something I actually need? The answer was no, so I basically grabbed my gender confusion, put it in a box and buried it in the sand. I decided I wasn't going to do anything about it and was just going to forget it and live a "normal" life as a man. I tried of course, and I keep trying but DUH I'm here now which means that, of course, those feelings and thoughts never went away, they just hid for a while. But they're with me, they're part of me, always.
Nowadays I still think about being a woman every single minute of the day, if I hear a song I dream about how I would dance to it if I was a girl, if I meet a person, I fantasize about how I would interact if I was a girl. The feelings. Never. Go. Away. The weirdest part, and this is one of the things I would love to know if anyone goes through as well,is that it seems like as the day goes by, the gender confusion/dysphoria or whatever you want to call it intensifies more and more, to the point where last night, for example, I was at the gym lifting weights and completely demotivated thinking "why the heck am I doing this? I don't want to be muscular. I'm already a bit muscular and it really hasn't made any difference in how I feel about myself, if I gain more muscle and look more manly it'll become harder to transition" I felt like crap! And thinking about transitioning was the only thing that made me happy and made me feel at peace. But then...I go to bed and when I wake up the next morning is almost like my mind "reboots" itself and I start thinking "are you insane? Why were you thinking those things last night? That is never going to happen, you're not transgender and you're never transitioning, you're not losing all you have now, get a grip!" this is the cycle my mind goes through every freaking day. A never ending cycle so it's like ok am I or am I not transgender? am I or am I not doing this? A part of me hopes I get the guts to transition at some point and just be happy but then there's the huge "you must have a normal life" part of me that tries to ground me to reality. It's like my dreams versus reality.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not miserable or depressed...But I'm honestly not living at a 100%. I feel it everyday, I don't care about things, I don't care enough about me, my career, I'm completely apathetic about life and just letting things happen the way life wants them to happen. I feel like I'm holding myself back and deep down I know it's because of this. I will never be able to be truly a 100% happy and satisfied with myself if I don't fix this. But I don't know how to fix it, I don't know what I am or what to do. Thinking about transitioning or about being a girl or living as a girl takes me to my safe place where I feel happy and free...but then the real me steps by and tells the other me to knock it off. I'm just tired of it.
