u/Grizzily-404

To start I would like to say this isn’t my first time questioning my gender but this is the first time it’s felt this strongly.
When I was a kid I used to go to bed crying and genuinely thinking that if I was a girl or could take a pill to wake up a girl I could wear the clothes I wanted without my dad hitting me and I could play with my friends without teachers pushing me to the boys.
As I grew up I tried to continue wearing girls clothes more specifically sneaking my moms for a while but she later talked to me and convinced me “you’re not a little kid it’s time to dress your age”, to which I started forcing myself into men’s clothes all the while just feeling idk wrong? Like super, super uncomfortable.

One thing I do remember from a while childhood I can’t was and still am being hella into horses and back then more into mlp, getting to dress in who I thought was gonna be an older step sisters hand me downs (my dad was dating her mom and we lived together) and one day while playing with said horses and pony’s with her while wearing girly bright blue overalls and a pink frilly shirt, my dads response was less than okay and I won’t get too into beyond saying my dads words if “you’re a boy, boys don’t wear that garbage” and he had to move me to a different school after I healed from his… education… otherwise cps woulda intervened and that “move to a new school” took a week.

I thought I would “just learn to be a guy” so I pushed it all down deep within me and moved on thinking “I’ll get a beard and get tall and be a guy once puberty hits”, all my life I’ve just wanted to feel like myself but I’ve also wanted to fit in. Through middle and into Highschool I had waxed and weigned my thoughts on my gender even sneaking clothes from time to time.

In highschool I did indeed get a beard as well as an almost too deep voice that then and now throws people off, I’m often getting comments like “wow! Deep voice!”, “giving Sam Elliot a run for his money?”, “can you say something like Morgan freeman?” And others all meant as compliments but I can’t help but feel uncomfortable with it and my voice. I’ve never really liked my voice but others love it and it’s a smooth deep that is calming to many (almost everyone I’ve met has said this) so I do take some small pride there. My beard I just kinda let it grow, I didn’t and still don’t take care of it much cause as I see it it’s just kinda there. I ended up going into football, track and field as well as weight lifting because twink me thought a deep voice and beard wasn’t making me feel like that man I thought I had to be, worked my ass off through Highschool I went from 115 to 220 in almost all muscle bouncing between a 4 and 6 pack on any given day based on water and food eaten, yet this still didn’t make me feel like any more a man and I caught myself yearning to join my mom and cousins on days out where they went shopping for clothes, painting their nails and getting their hair done so I tried to join via growing my hat out more and dying it with my cousins just to try and have some kinda connection with a part of myself I had forgotten at that time.

Through these years before I graduated high school from the ages of like 10-17 I was in and out of court for family matters but every time it came time to choose a suit I always was drawn to the women’s section and was enamored by the women’s suits with long skirts and those cute af double breasted jackets and yet my mom with her “oh no sweetheart you need to pick a suit I already have my dress” and pushed me to the men’s suits in which I would struggle to pick damn near anything cause it was all so just uncomfortable and wrong to me. So I picked pink shirts, grey/white suits and purple/pink ties to try and express myself. I hated wearing the suits and remembered after each court session I would practically rip the suit off as soon as I could switching to loose shorts (mimicking skirts now that I think back on it) and rolling up sleeves to feel more free.

Again back to end of high school i remember talking with marine Corp recruiters wanting to join something that would connect me to my Uncle and Grandpa under the mindset “they made them men they can make me a man”. Thus I did my time as an artillery-man until I got medically discharged. Coming back home and feeling even less of myself I spiraled got rather big by a good 60-70 pounds and not in a good way. Lost and confused welding school came out of the blue and thus I went to college where I got back into working out and trimmed my depression beard, yet away from my mom and the rural town she was living in I started to have dreams where I woke up as a woman, started to look at women’s clothes again and looked at women in public with a deep like envy or like thinking what if that was me mindset.

Experimenting with cross dressing via getting a sweater dress it had itchy seams, was rather form fitted and I almost had it the wrong way around three times and yet it felt like it was right, probably one of the most comfortable clothes I’ve ever worn and made me feel comfortable in myself. While roomates were away and cause I had already had a shaved arm for a tattoo I was getting I decided to shave my other arm and my legs while wearing the dress around the house just comfortable. That was until I saw my face in the mirror and saw that man’s body my mind instantly told myself my dads old retoric from long ago “boys don’t wear that garbage” thus I threw it off me, burried it so deep that even looking for it yesterday in my old college totes idk where it went. I shut myself down again and went back to just focusing on work and using music and games to shut my brain off and drift.

Met the woman who is now my fiancé while running a dnd campaign, moved back home to support my mom through surgery and moved my fiancé with us to save her from her own situation. And now a few years later these thoughts of being a woman have come back harder than ever, my fiancé is very loving and supportive and has admitted certain things she has said and or done be it intimate or otherwise showed her what she needed to know and told me that it’s time to stop ignoring this to face it and figure out what’s going on in my head especially because on a few occasions I seemed far more responsive not only on outings or in activities when she used feminine if not straight up female pronouns and verbiage.

And now for the last few months I’ve really been sitting with my thoughts, sitting with those day dreams i usually shut down and I’m still trying to organize it in my mind. I used Ai (which I don’t condone but I’m a visual thinker and am at a wits end with myself) to see what would I look like as a woman to which the ai edited a few of my images (including me in an outfit inspired by one my fiancé wears cause I tried cross dressing again) that looked eerily similar to the woman I’ve day dreamed myself as before. Strangely enough seeing myself on woman’s clothes as a woman and in my work clothes as a woman even though it was slightly off I still feel that those images are better than any photo taken of me ever.

I’ve sat with memories I’ve repressed that’ve almost brought me to tears thinking about and realized I sometimes unconsciously push my chest together to try and mimic myself able to look down at a cleavage only to release it and see my pecks with nothing but depressive weight. I’ve come out as gay before thinking a that’s all it was but with my fiancé have learned I’m either Bi or Pan and idk some part of me fears that if these other thoughts are right then I’m trans… and if I’m trans then that brings up the fear of loosing my mom since I’ve already been abandoned by my father, my grandmother I know would disown me and my other grandparents are now dead, I’m not deeply connected to my family but something about the thought of disappointing my mom after having had my dad say “you’re not my son, you’re not a (Insert last name), I don’t know what you are” after a major fight of ours and those we’re his last words to me.

Now I think I’m just gender fluid or something cause I don’t mind being a guy, I just hate looking at my body or knowing this is the one I’ve got most days and only really have facial hair because I mean it makes me kinda fit in better with guys and the guys at work now… I’m just terrified of what these thoughts could mean and what if it turns out I am trans then I’ll be different again like when I was a kid and I could loose everything and it terrifies me, but I’m so fucking depressed most days, can’t stand to look at myself nor my body, hate my boy clothes and in using ai (which I don’t condone) I saw myself as a woman and it damn near broke me cause I’m my head I thought “that’s the best photos of me I’ve ever seen and it from a damn AI…”

And the other night idk how we got on the subject but after my fiancé said she wouldn’t touch me if I was the last man which idk started to make me cry but when she hugged me and said “cause you’d-be the last woman” it felt calming and reassuring in a way I can’t understand.

I’m sorry this is so long it’s been months of pent up thoughts that I’ve been working through.