*** I just want to start by saying that these are my own thoughts about myself and that I'm not necessarily saying they are true for anyone else.



I was out at the store doing some grocery shopping today, and while I was doing it I was having this conversation with myself going on in my head. (Of course this came on the heels of deeply envying this girl with an amazing body wandering up and down the isles) I was thinking back on my journey up until this point, and the sense I'm starting to make of it all now in this moment. I'm going to share some of these thoughts here now. This might get a little bit stream of conscience, but I think they are relevant. At least they are to me. Perhaps my words might be relevant to someone else too.



I first came across the forum, I believe, in 2011. I found it through a lot of google searching trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Though I'm not a fan of the term now, autogynephilia was an important word to me at the time. What it meant was that what I was experiencing was a real thing. It also meant there were others out there like me having similar experiences. I can't begin to tell you what a relief it was. "You mean I'm not mentally ill? Thank god!" At the time I was lost. I was a babe in the woods trying to make sense of any of this. I think at the time, I bought into the idea that this was a sexual fetish. Who was I to say differently? All I knew was that since I was an adolescent I was having sexual fantasies about being a woman. I wasn't gay, and I wasn't ready to run out and have a sex change, so it must just be a fetish. No problem. Everyone has their kinks, right? I eventually drifted away from this subject and away from the forum because I convinced myself that now that I knew what it was, I had a handle on it. It's no big deal, just my little secret, my little masturbation fantasy. I'm not hurting anyone. No one needs to know. Everything will be fine.



Fast forward 5 years...it's not fine. Now I'm back again. I underestimated what I was dealing with. I mean, I suppose I can go on forever dealing with it in the way I have, but it hasn't been the recipe for a satisfied life. I still don't really have a clue what that recipe is, but I now know that I can't walk this journey completely alone. Going through life hiding this secret feels like such an incredible burden on my shoulders. These fantasies have existed in my life since my teens. I'm in my 30s now, and they are as strong as they've ever been. I now know they damn sure aren't going to go away.



I do believe at this point everyone has (I've seen the term recently) a gender core, or an essenece, or whatever you want to call it, I think we all have it to varying degrees. Some people lean stronger one way or the other than others, but it's there. Where it comes from, whether it's the soul, or brain circuitry wired by hormonal influences, who knows. What I do know now....this ain't a fetish. (if you disagree with anything I say, refer to the first line above) I no longer believe that the origins of this are sexual in nature. Yes, I have sexual fantasies about being a woman, but it's a symptom, it's not the cause. I think we can all agree that gender is very relevant to sexuality for obvious biological reasons. If you have an inner woman trying to be heard, it only stands to reason that she is going to use sexuality as a catalyst for asserting herself. When the mind goes to sex, she's there. She's saying, "I'm a woman, I'm here, and I have needs." She's been there all a long. Sex is just an avenue to the conscious mind.



What I now know is that everytime I have a mental imagine of myself, it's female. It doesn't have to be sexual. I do hypnosis and meditation exercises. I might have a recording taking me through a relaxation exercise of imagining myself walking on the beach or a grassy field. I'm always female in these images. It's not sexual. In these circumstances, imagining myself as male actually feels unnatural and a little uncomfortable. Being female just feels...right. When the outer self doesn't match the inner self, it sucks big time. I don't need to tell anyone here that. We all know. All the cis people we are surrounded by, they don't know. To most of them it is probably a sexual perversion or a mental health issue.



What I'm now being forced to face is that this isn't as simple as sweeping a fetish under the rug. This is wrestling with my very core, my very essence. I've spent the last 5 years slapping a band-aid on a broken leg wondering why it still hurts. I don't hate being a man. I don't hate my body. It just doesn't match who I am. What I do hate is the internal struggle. I hate having a hard time being intimate with people because I'm not comfortable in my own skin. I hate fearing being found out. I hate feeling like if people really knew who I was inside they would run away. I can't deny being biologically male, but I can't keep disrespecting myself by treating my femininity like a masturbation fantasy either. It's tough to marry these two together, and I'm tired of living my life feeling incomplete.



I don't know what the right answers are. I guess that's why I've come back. But anyway, these are the thoughts that have been roaring through my mind like a raging storm today. I just felt like getting them out in the open.



