I always feel bad about the fact that I feel male in some capacity, except for that year where I worked really hard at not focusing on my own identity.  Or school.  Okay, so basically I just smoked a bunch of pot and zoned out.  But those days are over.
My roommate/brother has moved out, and I have opted to quit smoking as a result.  But that's tangential, not really related to my point.
My urges to be a woman (and I actually find it difficult to articulate that thought so directly) have been getting stronger for a couple of months now, and since my brother moved out I've been dressing in the evenings when I don't have friends over or anything (which is, like, never.)  I've come to a point where I'm finding it difficult to sexualize what I am anymore, and it's forcing me to deal with the fact that this isn't just some fetish rather than being peripherally aware of it.
But I think of coming out, and I feel like even if my parents weren't accepting that they've matured enough in the past few years to tolerate me, and tolerating's pretty much what they've been doing with me for 22 years now.  But I think of my girlfriend and I think "how will she take this?" because she's, honestly, infatuated with me and this is the sort of thing that could be psychologically scarring to a significant other who already has a nervous disorder.  And I'm back in university despite having graduated to upgrade, and student loans cut me off so my grandparents are footing the bill.

And, like, I performed poorly in university the first time around in order to get a useless degree in English and Philosophy.  I smoked dope for the longest time and my mother found out about it.  I'm not a responsible adult- I spend my money on videogames, DVDs, and toys despite my age.  Now my grandparents are footing a bill because they believe in me despite all evidence to the contrary.

Then I think to myself, "if I come out of the closet.  How long will my chain of disappointments grow?" and then I can't bring myself to imagine a future as a woman.  But at the same time, I'm starting to lose my ability to see my future as a man as anything other than dreary, monotonous, and unhappy as hell.  That would be my mental block.  I see a distinct divide between what people expect of me, what I'm capable of, and what I want.  I cannot seem to reconcile them, and no amount of philosophy or expert storytelling has been able to console me.

I don't know what kind of advice I might be seeking, maybe none.  This has just been eating at me.

What you're capable of is directly proportional to how much effort you put in -- at least that's what I keep telling myself.  I'm in a semi-similar boat.  I have one course left to get my useless English degree, but I've been failing it or putting it off for nearly 2 years, and that's 2 years past the time I was supposed to graduate.  String of disappointments describes my situation with respect to my parents pretty well.  But I went and told them anyway... still attempting to work through that with them, delayed series of emails back and forth.  They don't really 'believe' me.

But if you're back in university, are on a student health plan?  And are you seeing a gender therapist?  What seems clear to me is that this isn't something that's going to go away for you, but you need to work through some of these things with someone, for which I recommend finding and seeing a gender therapist.  This forum is a great place, but my experience is that talking to someone in person has a certain... realness... to it, that can be easy to dismiss in internet conversation.

My issue is time.  I don't have a whole lot of it.  I wouldn't even begin to know how to find a gender therapist.  I mean, there's the campus psychologist, but I live in the Canadian equivalent of Conneticut or some other equally backwards ass bible belt state.

Jester

It isn't my place, nor anyone else's to tell you what you should do.

But you're at a very loose end for a number of reasons, some of which you've listed.

As for your sexuality, this is a question everyone has.

As for your question, are your current feelings an indication of a greater need?

That you can only answer for yourself. Sorry. Reality bites hard.

I'm sure you can get a lot out with a psychologst. But the problem with these sort of people is that we tend to place too much hope and belief in their ability.

A psychologist who thinks any sexual deviation is the work of satan, will probably try to move you away from that notion.

A psychologist who thinks being transgendered is so utterly hip and helping a transgendered person will demonstrate just how open minded and fantastic he is, will probably encourage you.

But psychologists are just ordinary people with a lot of fancy words and an ego. They don't have any answers, any more than some some guru who wants your money.

Read the messages on this forum. Have a look through the thread titles and read entire threads. Get a feeling for what this is and what people who have to deal with it feel.

But please don't start with the idea that this is an easy way, this is a solution to problems, or a path to happiness.

Being transgenderd is hard, it's lonely, it's frustrating, it's often dangerous.

More importantly, it isn't hip.

But it is something that we have to do.

Whether you have to do it is up to you.

Just for the record, Connecticut is not bible belt, or backwards, but pretty much the exact opposite, its the home of WASP Country Club Republicans.  But still..

Talking to a professional might help, I doubt the Canada University system is hiring a lot of fundamentalist Christians for those jobs.

Maybe, instead of hanging out and getting more degrees, you might benefit from leaving college and doing a bit of reality in a different place.  You have a degree (and for the most part that's all that is important - it matters less what its in) and the credits will hold, you might try working.  Working tends to focus people's minds in a different way. 

My bad.  Geography's terrible.  How about... New Hampshire?  That place sounds pretty awful from what I've heard.  "Shopping capitol of the world."  *Shudder* Some state in the middle where the status quo is way more important than progress.  Not that progress is a universally good thing.

I could work.  Working would mean call centre.  Without exception.  Because it's call centre, manual labour, or retail in this province.  Proper desk jobs don't want me because of my long hair and almost universally negative attitude, especially towards things like government, and mindless work.

I don't want to work.  There's no meaningful work left in the world that can't be done without six degrees and a tremendous amount of luck.

Manual labour would be a lot better than a call center.

But your comment on the world of work suggests you really need to get out there.

This is also why you really need to see a therapist, gender specialized or not.  You have a negative mindset and you're just not going to get anywhere like that.  As for gender therapists, this page has a list for some in Canada:

http://www.drbecky.com/therapists01.html

(you have to scroll down for the Canada section).

If none of those are near you, go to your campus psychologist person and try getting help for your negativity first.  If you can start tackling that, you'll find that the other things will start falling into place.

Jester, listen to your grandma Kate here:

The years I smoked dope I was avoiding reality.  I missed a lot of opportunities because I was too messed up to realize they were there.  I'm glad for your sake that you've quit.

You cannot get a desk job because you have long hair and "almost universally negative attitude."  Well, those are within your control.  If you want a decent job, you can adjust a little and get a decent job.  Or you can blame the idiots for not hiring you because you act in a way that pushes people away.  It's up to you.

I spent 12 years in university (4 of it at night while holding a fulltime job).  I learned some useful things, but where I learned how to live and get along with others and be part of the world and become successful was when I was working.  Sometimes I worked jobs I hated, sometimes jobs I loved, but I learned a lot in all of them.  It forced me to get out of myself, to discipline myself, to get along with others, to swallow my pride a few times.  Real-world work helped me.  It might help you.

You need to get your head on straight.  I recognize the symptoms because I went through it.  Talk to one of your counselors.  Yeah, they're idiots, but they just might say something useful or get you to think about your life.  You can continue to gripe or you can do something about it.

*end of talking-to*

Good luck, dear.

*hugs*
Kate

a) Every job has aspects to it that your not going to like.  Pretty much, that's what makes it a job, and that's why they pay you.

b) Like so many people here, perhaps all of them, I sure did a lot of jobs in my life that I didn't like - but since I did like having a place to live, eating and that stuff, I went to work anyway.  I know people would love to have my job, or my pay, or both - but it took 40 years to get to this place.  Tons of people in my union would love to work at the Fillmore, despite it paying about half of what working a convention does, largely because it's the Fillmore and not a dentist convention.  But seniority rules, which sucks when you're young, but seems pretty cool to me now.

I've got nothing about actually working itself, I work at a grocery store right now to pay the bills and it's not too bad.  Once I'm done school they probably won't adjust my hours and I'll need to get a new job.  I don't mind call centres too much.  It's about the most anonymous job a person can have, and I want very little more than for people to ignore me.  What always gets me at jobs are the people that think that their job at a grocery store, or at a call centre, or in random office #167 and how they think that their job's actually important.  Well, that's fine, some people need to tell themselves things like that.  I just wish they wouldn't treat me like I should also think that I'm changing the world by offering people an extension on their accidental death and dismemberment insurance.

Plus, I actually like school.  I didn't apply myself enough because I thought I could get by on my good looks and charm (and I did, but not as spectacularly as I did in the public education system.)  I want to learn more philosophy- all of the important stuff.  The Greeks set a good foundation, the medieval Christians might not have had anything inciteful to say, but they did help the darkest age in history find the light again, the renaissance philosophers discovered what it meant to be an individual and what it meant to be part of a society, and the 19th century philosophers aggressively asserted the value of your own personal will.  When you don't have a god to appeal to, and a very weak moral compass of your own, this stuff gets damned important.

I wanna write.  I was finally on a good start, but it seems I've accidentally deleted my novel without making any backups.  If I can't write, I want to teach.  Not because I like kids, but because I think that society's backslided to such a point that education, not activisim, is the only way to fix the sorry state of things.

I want to go to a counsellor, but I've got a mental block there as well.  In my family, psychiatric help was looked on in disdain because if you went to a shrink then you must be crazy.  I know that's not true, but I find it difficult to go against my programming.  The one time I did go to a counsellor, this was in highschool, he seemed more intent on proving to me that I was a gay male than listening to anything I had to say.  My girlfriend sees a psychologist, and it really seems to have gotten her anxiety under control.

Has anyone read Kierkegaard's "Repetition"?  I feel like I'm in a state of being, and the possibilities of the future are so many and so varied that I'm paralyzed with indecision, and can't bring myself to a stage of becoming.  Be that in personal relationships, academic pursuit, career mobility, or gender issues.  I recently had a thought, "Stop trying to change, and change."  I have noticed some progress.  Notably the way that I haven't been escaping into dope. I'm trying to be able to see the world from other people's perspectives, and I am making progress, but "progress" in this sense still leaves me violently militant to other people, and while I might be able to empathize with people in similar situations to me, I find sympathy to be an entirely alien emotion.  I'm getting better at pretending to have sympathy, and I think that might be all that other people do anyways.

It's bad.  Hating the world and hating yourself.

Thanks for the list of gender therapists.  I'll give it a look.  I don't want to be one of those people who revels in their own misery.

Edit:  That list can't be complete.  There's no way that there are no gender specialists in Ontario or Quebec.  Especially seeing the number of transsexual people I saw in Montreal.  I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't any out here in the Eastern boonies though.  My entire province has fewer people in it than most major cities.

Jester,
There are some things we can't do alone, or are so hard that we can use some help.  Sometimes you're crazy if you don't go to a therapist (counselor, shrink, whatever).

I live in a very lightly-populated area.  There are no gender therapists around.  I went to a regular therapist (clinical psychologist).  She helped me figure things out.  We started on some of my issues that had nothing to do with gender.  By the time we got to my gender issues, I had a stronger basis from which to work.

I'm sorry that you don't see your connection to everyone around you, how what you do affects others and vice-versa.  I feel that we're somehow all in this together.  And no, I don't believe in an intentional god.  But that's my own belief system.

Good luck.  You sound like you have a lot of potential.  If you can learn to channel it you will be awesome.

- Kate

On the bright side.  I conclusively proved that a girl that I thought might be pregnant by my hand is not.  And she has a boyfriend.  Forward progress once again possible now that that particular nagging horribleness is gone.

I conclusively proved that a girl that I thought might be pregnant by my hand is not.

Umm, it's not your hand that does that.  Perhaps a biology course?

Lol.  Wanna know something scary?  The girl I'm dating now once thought she got pregnant from a handjob.  Hooray for sex-phobia.  *SIGH*

It feels like I'm reviving a dead thread, but I think what I'm adding is relevent to my cause.

I've thought for a while now that maybe I might like to be a hairdresser, though I'm not especially good at small talk.  I gave myself a haircut the other day and people have actually been complimenting me on my work, which is weird because I was expecting "what kind of idiot cuts their own hair?"  It's brought back the thoughts of hairdressing though.   There are a hundred social faux pas reasons why I can't do that as is though.

This seemed to bear both on the issue of my mental block to coming out, and maybe why I suck so much in the workplace.

Everybody needs some of those mad prop skilz mofo.  You know, something that other people will consistently give you money to do.  Cutting hair isn't so bad.  I gave it some thought at one time, its got some good stuff going on.  The total investment is not huge, other than the school.  You can do it on a free lance basis.  You can do strange hours and build up a costumer base that way, exclusive and private, and because you are doing an extra special catering to them they pay you pretty well.

Anyway, sure, its a nice girl thing to do in a lot of ways, and you can learn to do small talk.  I'm all in favor of discussing literature and doing philosophy, but I'm really down with the whole working deal.  Everybody's GOT to do something. 

Ha.  I have more earning power out of the closet than in it.  Imagine that.

---> In before "There are male hairdressers too."  Not the kind of guy I am.

Oh I wouldn't be too sure about any of that 'what kind of person' does what nonsense.  Reality is just too weird for any of that to really be true.  Sure, there are gay hairdressers. But there are straight ones too.  I know a guy who went to the Sassoon school (which trains to cut using only scissors) and he goes around giving private haircuts, often I see him at the show doing someone in the band.  True there are lots of gay men in ballet, but the straight ones are doing a might huge traffic in straight sex.  The guy I know who is better with fabric on a theatrical scale is a big biker dude.  You just can't tell anymore.

I wasn't being so narrow.  The music I listen to, the way I dress, the views I've expressed.  Then again, everyone knows that I love my hair more than any other guy that they've.... ever met.