Hi there,
I use my gender neutral middle name. Casey. I'm 42 and I live in Central Texas.
I am an anatomical male and very much a female on the inside. I won't be transitioning. While I have never been diagnosed as gender dysphoric (because I can't afford councilling), I fit every single one of the DSM-5 markers for it, and I know what I feel inside.
First let me start by saying, that this is something I have never discussed with anyone before. I have severe social anxiety on top of my identity problems and so its very hard for me to open up to people. On top of that I can not afford really any of the medical councilling or other things that lead to transition, and as I am now middle-aged and was cursed with a tall, broad-shouldered build, I am not sure I even would want to.
I have wanted to be female my entire life. I clearly remember back all the way to grade school believing so. I grew up in a home run by my mother and grandmother who I idolized, and my abusive brother who I still hate to this day. My father was a disgusting pig who beat my mother and blissfully was never in my life as she divorced him when I was a toddler. When I was little I had dolls and stuffed animals provided by my grandmother. When I started school I usually was either hiding to avoid other guys or playing with the girls when they would actually let me. In my early teens over summer break and while my brother was thankfully gone, I would dress in my mother's clothes and actually loved how I looked. I was a lanky teen and took after my mother and so it wasn't hard to look at least decent. Unfortunately, I never could of ever really brought up my feelings at the time to my mother, and when I hit my mid-teens and puberty, I gained 7 inches of height (I am 6' 4") and developing very masculine features... which for me killed any chances of ever being the girl I wanted desperately to be.
So I am very much the woman trapped in a hideous man's body. Note, and I don't mean to offend anyone when I say "hideous man's body" .. I am speaking strictly of my own and because of my own hatred for my reflection I have developed a sort of repulsion for the male form. I don't hate men, I just don't really want to look at them. Which is a perfect segway to the fact that despite very badly wanting to be a woman, I am also still very much attracted to them.
I have tried a few outlets to relieve how I feel, mostly reading fiction and maintaining a trans-female online presence in Second Life, but I literally have no one to talk to in RL that I trust with this kind of secret.
I suffer from very very bad depression, yes suicidal at times and though I don't act on the impulses they are there. I have self-harmed in the past (cutting) mostly out of hatred for my own skin. I am being treated for the depression but not the underlying cause, which as I've eluded to I can't really discuss with anyone, which is kind of what brought me here. I am totes rambling and actually crying as I write (I am an emotional wreck in general) this so I will end it here except to say again. Hello.
-Casey
