This hit me like a week ago. I straight up panicked. I still kinda am. I don't know what to do. I'm fucking terrified. How do you learn how to be a girl in your forties? I don't even know how to do makeup, every time I tried it looked like shit.
I thought I was a femboy. A kinky weird femboy with a supportive girlfriend that didn't mind the occasional dressing up. This is probably way too much for her. I think it's too much for me. But now that I know this I can't not know it. It's like my subconscious just came out of nowhere and was like, "Hey you know that quirky thing about you? Well it turns out that's entirely you, and you're miserable trying to deny it. By the way everything in your experience tells you that people will hate you for it, and the state is actively trying to harm people like you. Also crazy people will probably want to kill you about it Byeeeeeeee!"
What do?
Edit: Thanks everyone for all the helpful comments. All this is still big and scary right now, but I feel a little better about where I am now, and the first few steps. This is a good community here.
At least now you know what has been eating you for so long. Like Morpheus said to Neo in the movie The Matrix:
You can't unlearn it, it would only hurt you more trying to pretend like nothing has changed. I hope the people in your life will support you through this.
I wish more people in my life understood that. Like, most do and are supportive, but the ones who don't...
I could pretend it wasn't true, but I can't un-know this about myself, and so however it looks from the outside, my life will never quite be what it was before. It's like I've learned an Eldritch secret about the world: nothing has changed, but somehow everything is different.
Transintolerant people don't care about the wellbeing of trans people because they don't see them as people in a similar way racists don't see minorities as people. The transintolerant people in your life delude themselves into thinking they are helping by trying to convince you not to transition because they subconsciously believe you will lose your humanity once you transition. This is the same reason gay kids were subjected to punishment by their homointolerant parents including literal torture, because the parents believe that being gay makes you less of a human and they think they are saving your humanity.
If you're an adult, they have less power over you, and it's perfectly reasonable to distance yourself from them, or cut off contact entirely for your own well being.
As a cis guy, I may never know what it feels like to come to such a realisation, but I can empathise and support my friends who go through with this kind of experience, and I believe that it is the duty of people like myself who are in a better place to support the ones who aren't by both directly supporting trans people emotionally and also to attempt to educate transintolerant people to be more accepting.
Thanks for this.
Unfortunately, in order to succeed in distancing myself from them, I have also had to increase my distance from a bunch of my family that are supportive. My family is really connected, and one of the two main offenders is my dad, so making more distance with him means going to fewer family get togethers.
And the other main person is my wife and my daughter's other mom, and that's another relationship where adding distance is difficult to impossible...
I'm sorry to hear that, and I hope you can interact with the positive people in your life more while establishing boundaries with the worst ones if not avoiding them all together. Also, hope you manage to add new supportive people into your circle.