I'm writing this post to publicly come out as trans (specifically: I wish to transition to become a woman).
This post won't be as polished or edited as my usual posts, because that's kind of the point: I'm tired of having to edit myself to make myself acceptable to others.
I'm a bit scared to let people know that I'm trans, especially because I'm not yet in a position where I can transition (for reasons I don't want to share, at least not in public) and it's really shameful. However, I'm getting really sick of having to hide it, so I'm writing this up because I just want to be seen.
Besides coming out, I'm also writing this post to share my own experiences so that other people in a similar situation might be able to relate and recognize that their own feelings are valid.
The first thing that made it hard for me to come to terms with my own gender was that the onset was reeaaallly slow. I imagine everybody's experiences are different, but for me the extended metaphor I like to use to explain my own story is like struggling with back pain.
For anybody who has ever had chronic back pain, it sneaks up on you over time. When you're young you're pretty resilient because, well, you're young. For example, I spent most of my youth sitting all day in front of a computer in weird positions and always had terrible posture, but my body could handle it just fine. However, as time went on I became a little less and less resilient and the signs of weakness began to show. First, I'd start to wake up too early in the morning from back pain, then I'd start losing sleep every night, until the point where I was having to take sick leave once every week or two because my health was a complete wreck.
And as things grew worse, I would constantly misdiagnose the problem over and over again. "Maybe I'm sleeping in the wrong position". "Maybe I need to get a new mattress. Should it be harder? Softer?" "Should I get surgery?" It took me a long time to figure out that what I really needed was (mostly) regular exercise and (to a lesser extent) good posture. Once I figured that out things went back to normal pretty quickly. Most importantly, once I figured things out it was pretty self-evident that I had found the correct solution both because the relief was almost immediate and also because a lot of prior experiences made much more sense ("Oh, THAT'S why I sleep better in hotel beds, because I was staying active the whole day while traveling or on vacation").
Coming to terms with my gender was just like that, except mentally instead of physically. My mental health started to slowly deteriorate, and when I was young I was able to cope with it at first, but it got progressively worse until it started to overwhelm my coping mechanisms. And, just like back pain, I was completely off the mark in diagnosing the problem for a long time until I finally realized that the root cause was gender dysphoria. Once I took concrete steps to explore my feminine side the relief was almost immediate and also a whole lot of things made much more sense in retrospect.
That's not to say that there weren't other clues that I was trans. Quite the opposite: my life was littered with pretty clear signs that I dutifully ignored. One of the more extreme examples is that at one point I literally told my wife, verbatim, "Sometimes I feel like a woman trapped in the body of a man" and even then I was still totally in denial about being trans.
When you're in denial, it's really easy to rationalize away odd behaviors. For example, in video games I'd always want to play a female protagonist in private, which I'd rationalize as "I'm attracted to women, so of course I want to play one". This made superficial sense to me if I ignored the fact that I'd do it even when the protagonist was not attractive or even for text-based video games (like MUDs).
One of the best pieces of advice I got when asking a trans friend about my feelings was something like: "If you even have a little bit of a suspicion you are trans then you should explore it, because if it's real then you'll keep finding more" and they were REALLY right. It was like opening up a can of worms, in the sense that when I started digging I found whole lot of stuff I had buried just beneath the surface out of internalized disgust against being trans.
One of the common questions I would get when I came out in private was: "What is it exactly about being a woman that appeals to you?" It's hard to explain, but the best answer I can give is that I have a strong desire to be seen for who I really am and not have to put on a façade to play the part that society expects me to. I want to finally be able to act natural, and that's hard to do when society treats the same behavior in men and women very differently.
That's why I'm writing this post, because even though I can't yet transition I still just want put myself all out there regardless, so I can start being truer to myself in public.
Respect and congratulations! I'm sure it took a lot of courage. Hopefully you were surprised with a lot of people supporting your decision and wish that you are happy in your life. Yes, I have been stalking your Twitter and GitHub for a few years now :). You were an inspiration before and you still are!