Inbetweener

I've been feeling sad and frustrated lately.  I masturbated to gay porn for the first time the other night and cried afterwords.  My gender seems to be the elephant in the room between my husband and I.  We allude to it sometimes but we rarely ever talk about it.  I worry that I can't be the woman that he wants me to be and I can't be the man I want to be.  I wouldn't mind some appreciation for the sacrifice that I feel I am making for my family.  I'm not convinced that I would pursue hormones or SRS even if they were not in the picture, but the option would be there at least.

A friend told me that I am her best friend today.  I don't feel like her best friend because I have this secret from her.  It is so hard for me to talk to anyone about it.  Thank god for the internet.  I also have the opportunity to meet a trans or trans-friendly person in the local area.  Honestly, I am terribly frightened that my trans feelings will be confirmed by others and then I will really want to transition.

I'm afraid that this life that I have would not be enough anymore if someone accepted me for who I am.  This whole thing is just so steeped in fear for me.  The major fear of my mother finding out has been lifted but it seems to have been replaced by so many others.

Everything to lose

My level of frustration is very high right now.  My goal a while ago was to meet people that I could be out to.  Now I have pulled back from that and although the urge to be out is very high, I'm afraid of what meeting people and having people accept me might lead to.  I can have a chance at happiness and royally screw up two people's lives or I can live with this frustration.  I wonder if it is even possible to be actually happy like this?  I try not to even think about transition, but it is hard not to.  Would I lose my hair if I went on T?  Would I get chest and maybe even back hair?  What would my chest look like without breasts?  How would people treat me if I tried to live as a man where I am so effeminate?  Would the guy I flirt with at work punch me in the face?  Sometimes I feel like my life is made up entirely of impossible dreams.

Confidence?

Several (many?) years ago, when I was only occasionally flirting with the idea that I might be transgendered, I gave a speech at a benefit dinner and auction.  People were amazed at my confidence.  I have had people comment on my confidence since and it thoroughly confuses me.  I have most of the same insecurities that most of the people I know do.  I think that it might be my masculinity emerging.  I think that it took a lot of energy to not be myself, and as I let me be myself as much as I can, then I can focus my energy on other things.  I'm not really sure how it works, but I like me more now.

Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian

I don't know if lesbian is the right term, where I feel like I'm male.  I guess sometimes I wish that I were attracted only to women.  If I were then I would have to enter the GBLT community in order to find a relationship, or at least that would be the most likely place to find one.  Also it might give me an opportunity to talk to people about my sexuality and gender identity. This is just a thought experiment.  I could be completely wrong.

Question 1

The following is a question by Madeline H. Wyndzen to help explore transgenderism. 

Imagine you could start life over, right from the moment you were born. Knowing everything you know now, you get to choose which sex you are born. What choice would you make? Why did you make that choice? What might be better about your life as the sex you chose? What might be worse about your life as the sex you chose? 

This question really got me because I haven't had the best life ever.  It's pretty good now, but it hasn't always been.  Also I find that a shrinks diagnoses of me wanting to be someone else has clouded my thoughts on my gender for a very long time.  If I chose to have been born the boy I feel I am, which is gay and somewhat effeminate, I doubt that my young life in the 70's and 80's would have been very pleasant.  On the other had, it is likely that I would have escaped the sexual abuse that happened to me on two occasions. 

Being transgendered led to depression and frustration until I knew what I was.  Even as a teen, knowing who I was for a short time, faced with leaving friends and family behind at the prospect of living my life as I felt it should be lived filled me with fear and apprehension at the same time as it filled me with hope.  Then 20-odd "lost years" while I was trying to be a female, during which I had no direction or ambition and almost no will of my own.  After my son was born, I got my act together a bit, but that was for another person, not myself.  Now I live with frustration and confusion.  I feel like I have a secret and no one really knows me.  I think that I would prefer to have lived my life without that if I didn't know about this life because I could not give up my son and husband for anything.

Isolation and frustration

My mother died just over 5 months ago.  My transgendered feelings have become much more intense since then.  I belong to a forum and someone on there posted to me that sometimes we keep secrets for other people and I think that is the case with me.  The only people that I was really worried about finding out about my gender were my mother and my aunt, who died a month ago.  I realize now how I have isolated myself.  My mother was my only social contact outside of my home.  We talked at least a couple times a day.  Now I would really like to reach out but I have no idea how.

When I started to try to be a girl in my late teens I developed a fear of the queer community.  The last thing that I wanted to do was meet someone like me who was happy and well adjusted.  I feel kind of bad about that because a friend of mine reached out to me to go with him to a group for young GBLTs and I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  He was pretty messed up and ended up much worse over time.  Now I want to reach out and I have no idea how to do it, or how I might be accepted.  I have one friend and I'm afraid to come out to that person because I don't know how discrete she would be and we work together.  Also some of the people I have come out to in the past have worked really hard to put me back the way I was, or flat out have not believed me.

My isolation has lead to frustration.  I really want to have friends who I am out to and accept me, but I don't know how to reach out.  Funny, I was thinking today that the way I am feeling now, the bursting frustration, is the same was I felt leading up to coming out to my mom.  I don't want to make the wrong move, I don't want to come out to the wrong person and make trouble for myself or my family or ruin a friendship.  Unfortunately, my frustration has leaked out into my job satisfaction and my parenting.  I don't know what to do.  I asked a social worker for help but she got nowhere.  Someone mentioned a group in Ontario that I might contact.  It is very far away but I have to do something.  I could cause myself considerable damage in my present state.