u/Extension-Reality-33

I don't know where to go here. My girlfriend (mtf) is trying to help me make heads or tails of all of this but I need some extra help. I don't know how to feel like I "count" if that makes any sense. I don't feel like a woman, and the farther I let myself go down the rabbit hole, the more I realize that I've been subconsciously moving in this direction, even since I was a kid. I still like SOME 'girly' things. And because I still like makeup every so often, and the pretty dress I have tucked in my closet but never wear, etc., I just feel like I'm 'holding on to too much of my femininity while actively feeling like a man 90% of the time'. I don't know how to stop feeling like I'm faking or lying, and honestly, a little reassurance would probably make me feel better if I can even ask for that.

This is probably going to be long and might not make a lot of sense, but I'm putting it down as it is in my brain, which is going to be tangled and messy asf.

So to preface, this started as me thinking that I was nonbinary when I was 15-16 ish. I'm now 20. It's come up a few times since then, but I've been trying to keep it in the pretty little box that I made for it. I really didn't want to think about it and hoped it would just go away on it's own. Obviously that didn't fucking happen.

This time around of thinking about it relentlessly has been going for over a month now. My girlfriend (who is transfem) picked up on a couple of things that I was saying and we talked it out, and she's doing great at making me feel safe enough to talk about it and figure out what I'm feeling.

If you made it this far, I'm getting to the point, I promise. Like I said, this makes little to no sense. I feel like i'm just generally not a woman. And while i like a small list of things about being a woman, they're not things that I like all the time. In fact I've been at a point for a while where I'm almost disgusted by the things that make me a woman if that makes any sense. I'm disgusted by my period (more so than that of the standard), I'm disgusted by my voice when I sing because I'm too feminine sounding (I also hate my voice any time that isn't when I first wake up and it's deeper.) My girlfriend has taken to calling me more masculine and androgynous nicknames, though I find myself wanting to cry when she calls me her pretty boy. I don't know what I want to do now, and I want to figure out where I fall because otherwise I'm going to sit here and feel like I'm going to go insane. I feel like if I'm unsure, then my feelings aren't valid. And like I'm just 'making it up because i have a trans girlfriend.'

Any sort of tips for how to navigate this stage or ideas on what I could do are extremely helpful. Thank you so much if you made it this far.