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I don't know if I need to do this for anybody but myself, maybe somebody reads this who's needing some inspiration to help them find themselves, but here goes.
Lets start with what I do know; I know I've a pretty submissive personality, and recently I've been crossdressing (which I hate as a word, sounds like you're not meant to do it) privately. Today I wore panties for the whole day and it felt like it was supposed to be that way. I don't think I need to come out to anybody I know since I've got a healthy relationship with my parents; if they ever found out incidentally they'd probably just figure 'huh, that's wierd' and just shrug it off and life would go on, so I don't think I need that gratification. At least not yet. Maybe, if this isn't just some minor kink that will go away, someday I'll have a need to make this part of my public life, but for right now, it's exhilarating to just get this down in some form of semi-permanent state.
I'm at least a crossdresser/sissy, if not more. I don't know, and I won't know for probably years whether or not this is just something my sex drive is guiding me to, or if I actually have a psychological need to be at least more female if not fully female, but I do know that I have at least some forms of body dysphoria, if not truly transexual urges. I'm hoping that if I can at least take baby steps towards finding out who I am, and hopefully know what road to take before it's too late to start walking down it.
I've struggled with depression for the grand majority of my life, and I think a large amount of it is due to a large disconnect between who I am and what I've ended up portraying myself as. My depressions have never been *due* to the fact that I'm overweight, socially awkward, and have a poor sense of hygiene, but I'm at least thinking, now that I'm discussing it here, that I've never taken care of myself due to a lack of commitment to who I could be as a 100% male. I've never tried to build muscle, play sports, or gone out of my way to otherwise further my male potential; I never saw the point in it and felt that I wouldn't ever be happy, even if I put all of my effort into being the strongest alpha male possible. For the longest while I was generally apathetic about life, not really caring about how I looked or came off to people, and not caring about my future. It's only recently have I had the presence of mind to be forthright with myself.
I've always had some sort of psychological resonance with gender fantasies since I was a child, and I've crossdressed in what limited manner as I could growing up (since I've got no sisters and I've got more respect for my mom than to ruin her clothes), but for the longest time (at least up until a few years ago when I was able to more privately get online in a regular fashion) I was stuck with the popular notion that transgenderism is a white and black thing; if you were truly transsexual, you were someone who was begging their parents to chop your genitals off as a 4 year old, otherwise you were just someone with a fetish. Maybe it's due to that that I've never really pursued any intimate relationships with anybody. Maybe it's due that that that I've always been super introverted. Maybe not. I do know that I'm glad that I know more now about how grey gender can be, and that if I can find out where I truly fall in that hazy spectrum I can at least be comfortable with who I am and use that positive emotional backing to start tackling all of my other life problems. I'm also glad that from what I've seen in the TS/TV communities is a general feeling of support, since everyone has felt all of the internal and external struggles of being non-cisgender to at least some extent. There's a great deal of sympathy in these communities which I applaud and has made it a lot easier for me to post this or even sign up for this forum.
By coming out in this manner, I hope I can at least start guiding myself towards being a healthier person in body and mind. I don't know if I can truly take care of myself as a full 100% male, since I have no commitment to a body image of myself as a truly masculine person, but I hope that even if what I'm attempting to come out as right now isn't who I turn out to be, I can at least commit myself to better hygiene, better exercise, and overall a better sense of self and personal pride as part of this experiment in self discovery. I've already started taking baby steps towards losing weight and taking care of myself, just knowing that part of the female experience is knowing what it's like to feel pretty. I've started shaving what parts of my body I can get away with without raising any alarms, though honestly my friends and family, save a few people, would probably just think I'm just going and being a wierdo like usual if I went full body waxing; I'm fortunate to not have ensconced myself in a community of intolerant people.
If I can put out a message to any lurkers in this forum that are being timid (which I have been for weeks now), it's try to be honest with at least yourself. I still don't know even what I'm truly coming out as, but I do know that in at least coming to terms with that fact that whatever I eventually come out as, even if I surprise myself by finding out that I'm really just a 100% alpha male who happens to just like wearing female clothes (though admittedly at this point that seems rather unlikely), it's OK. The only person that ever truly needs to like you is yourself, and if you like yourself, maybe other people will like you too.
