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.
Thank you. It's not about the makeup so much as that's one thing that is complex and intimidating among many things that are complex and intimidating about being a woman. It's the first thing I thought of, and I don't even know where to begin. I don't even have to wear makeup, many women don't. I feel like I'm at the bottom of a hill that looks steep and intimidating, I don't know if I can get to the top but at the same time this is just the first hill of the rocky mountains, and I have to get to the other side.
Don't try to be what the world thinks "girl" means. Just try to be you, and let the world be what it's gonna be. There's enough pressures on women in society already, let alone on trans women. Don't try to carry all of that yourself.
There will be people who put you down regardless of how you present, so again, just try to be comfortable as yourself. If that means you wear a ladies tee one day a week and nothing else changes, so be it. If it means you look and present exactly as you did before, but now you know yourself better: great. And if it means you dress up more eccentrically than lady gaga and scare people away, well... You do you.
But don't let everybody else tell you that you can't be comfortable as yourself, because they're wrong.