Very unsure but wondering if perhaps my egg has a tiny crack
Hello all you lovely people! I've lurked for quite a while and this is a brand new account just for the purpose of asking this here, just to get that out of the way. Oh also this might be long and kind of ramble because my thoughts are all over the place. I know it's asked by a lot of people but no two people are alike so I've finally decided to ask specifically about my own life and experiences. I'm sorry if I get some terms wrong.
I'm 40 and afab. I was raised in a strict conservative Christian household, including private Christian school. To the point where we were separated in middle and high school for any health class into boys and girls, and were *not* taught anything about the other gender, and used Christian biology textbooks which did *not* include anything but the most superficial, very short, often skipped reproductive system chapter, etc. Church, religious school, religious family, the entire worldview was girls are girls, boys are boys, girls mustn't tempt boys, girls must not have sex until they're married, there's no such thing as gay people and people who say they're gay are mentally ill, and I never even *heard* the word trans or anything like it.
But I hated wearing dresses and refused whenever I could, I loved video games and science fiction, I loved Lord of the Rings, I loved Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing and everything on Toonami and Adult Swim (I'm old I know haha), I loved coding and making my own websites with html (it was the late 90s after all). I'm saying all this even though *now* I know of course none of those things are gendered in and of themselves, but *at the time* the context was--those were boy things. The other girls I was around did not like those things. The boys I was around liked those things but didn't want me around because I was a girl. Basically was very lonely back then. And half of those things were very against my parents' strict rules so I had to hide that I liked them, anyway.
No worries, I always told myself, I'll go away to college and get to like what I like. I'll major in computer science and Japanese and maybe the guys will let me hang out with them like I want to. Maybe I can get a job programming video games.
I never dated in high school. Nothing ever really felt right. I liked guys, I knew that much. But I didn't like how guys liked or approached me. For a long time afterwards I thought it was probably because even if they acknowledged I liked the stuff they liked, they still talked down to me. I didn't want to be talked down to. I wanted to be in the group.
In college I did move away from home and I very quickly stopped going to church; I did not go to a religious college so all of that indoctrination stopped, eventually I realized I'm an atheist and so all the "rules" in the Bible didn't apply any more. But I was really naive having been taught pretty much nothing growing up, and even though I didn't agree with a lot of what I had been raised with, I didn't have anything to replace it with or even know what about it was wrong or might have a different meaning than what I thought for a long time.
I've always had a super active imagination, for example. To the point where I will feel the emotions and (if I'm alone lol) act out the scenarios. Half my waking hours when I'm doing things like washing dishes or showering or walking somewhere or shopping I am living a different story in my head. But I'm a guy in those stories. And when I dream I'm a guy. And my favorite fictional characters are guys. To me, I never told anyone about the dream thing. Because those were often sexual and I wouldn't tell anyone about them anyway, but also because I was sad when I woke up. But the imagination thing, well I just figured it was because in the stories I liked guys seemed to get the cool roles that I wanted. So of course I'd imagine I'm the guy. Sometimes I'd try to put myself in a female role in my story. Like a kick-ass girl who liked the stuff I liked and could do all the cool stuff the guys around her could do and was basically considered "one of the guys" and then like well might as well just be a guy then...? lol.
I didn't date much in college either because even though I was shedding my very strict religious upbringing I still wasn't really sure about myself other than that, as always, I liked guys. I like nice shoulders and thighs. Sex was fine. I've always orgasmed - like, always. Masturbating, having sex, doesn't matter. I did that before I ever knew what it was lol (remember we were *not* taught anything useful all through high school). So I guess I should say, physically, sex was fine. But emotionally I don't know, I wasn't super into it. I didn't want to be a sexy girl that a lot of boyfriends wanted me to be. It felt weird. I thought that was because I didn't like being sexualized or that my boyfriend asking me to wear sexy lingerie that he liked was actually sexist. (But now I don't think so, I mean, we were dating and why can't a partner ask their partner to wear something sexy? I think he was normal and I was the one with the issue, that is, not wanting to be seen as a sexy girl.) But at the time I just felt ick. Emotionally. Like I said. Sex itself was always fine. I enjoyed it. With others or alone, haha. Still do. Anyway.
College was ok. I was one of like 3 girls majoring in CS. More of the guys were cool with hanging out with me than in high school, so that was fun. But they were still the minority. Eventually I changed the CS major to a minor because I didn't want a future of always being "the girl programmer" and just majored in Japanese. I figured I could still get a job like translating or something at a gaming company so that would be cool. But actually I ended up getting a masters in TESOL instead and heading to South Korea to teach English at a university. Coding became just a hobby. Kind of skipping some steps in there but this isn't the most important stuff.
At one point I cut my hair very short. Like, guy short. I loved it. I went down to my brother's wedding, where I was going to be one of the bridesmaids, and my dad threw a fit. Like, his face was livid and red when he saw me. How *dare* I cut my hair that short, I was going to ruin my brother's wedding and all the pictures! He forced me to go get it permed. PERMED. It was SHORT. I looked ridiculous. I hated it. I threw away all the pictures they gave me. I think it would have looked great the way it was. I didn't go back or talk to my dad for a long time.
Soooo I eventually got married to a guy at 27 and had a baby. Turned out the guy I married was abusive. I did *not* see the red flags that were there. Part of this I chalk up to never having been taught about abuse before. Part of it I chalk up to wanting to stop feeling strange and be "normal" (which in my mind at the time still meant married with kids), and so I was okay with rushing a bit, and part of it was because the abuse didn't really pile on until I was pregnant, at which point it took a long time for me to realize what it was. I must have read a thousand "how to know if your spouse is abusive" articles, checklists, and websites before it finally got past my barriers and sunk in.
It escalated a lot after the baby was born. Got physical before the baby was 1 year old. Afraid for both our lives, I filed for divorce and that was finalized when the baby was 18 months--almost 10 years ago, now. I got custody of the baby.
So for a while there I was really in a bad space of taking care of a baby as a single parent, going to counseling for having been abused, working, trying to figure out my future, etc. He had messed up my finances as part of the abuse. (I was back in the states by this time.) I didn't live near family. Didn't want to, to be honest. My dad told me the only reason my husband left me was because I didn't wear enough makeup and I "talked back" too much. Yeah. Right. I told him about the abuse. I told him *I* was the one who filed for divorce. He didn't care. From that point on I stopped staying at his house or seeing him at all when I visited my brother and his family or my grandma, who all live there. My sister had run away at 17 because of our dad. She and I still kept in touch. She was a nurse and moved around a lot, and also worked abroad at times. Sorry. I'm talking about her in the past tense because she passed last year from cancer. She was so amazing.
Ok. Sorry. Rambling. In my head it all ties together but I don't know how confusing this is to anyone reading it. Sorry.
So then there was COVID. And then after COVID my sister moved in with me, and then she got sick and I was her caretaker, and then she passed. All that to say, you might be asking, like so how did you go from 30 to 40 without realizing or thinking about anything? Well, because I was busy, haha. I was healing from abuse, I was a single mom of a preschooler during COVID, I was taking care of my terminally ill sister.
But now my kid is older and doesn't need all my time as much as they did when they were little. Now my sister has passed and I'm getting out of the grieving stage a year later. Now COVID is still around, but it's not making us all stay at home and not socialize. Now I'm interested in dating.
But now I'm also more educated (because I wanted to be, I read some books and followed some YouTubers and lurked in lgbt and trans subreddits) - because for a while I thought maybe I'm actually a lesbian. Even though that sounds crazy because I've stressed this whole time I've *always* been attracted to guys. But sometimes I guess the mind doesn't know what it's looking for so it latches onto random stuff. But so for a while, I thought maybe I'm a lesbian. Because I have also sometimes found, I don't know, strong kick-ass women attractive. Sexually. When I was younger I thought that was because they were "like men." When I was older I thought huh, well, everyone's on a sexuality spectrum so it's not out of the question you might find some women attractive. I never dated a woman though. But I also less and less wanted to date men. I wanted to sleep with men. But I didn't want to have the same experiences as in college and find myself not wanting to be a girlfriend.
About a year and a half ago, during my sister's illness, I was really stressed out and I took to porn, lol. Might not have been the healthiest thing mentally but I console myself it could have been worse if I had turned to alcohol or drugs. Sorry that sentence might sound really judgy. I'm not trying to say porn is inherently bad and I'm also not trying to shame anyone who struggles with substance abuse. Just kind of stream of thought. Anyway. But I hated, and I mean *hated* the cis straight porn. I hated how the women were treated. I hated how they acted. I hated how the guys acted. I hated it all. Gay porn ads were on the site. I clicked over. Oh my god.
And so for a year and a half I've only watched mlm porn. I've only read mlm books. I've only watched mlm shows. In all of my imaginings I'm no longer only a man, I'm a gay man. And in my dreams--which in the past I was a guy having sex with women, now it's with men. And now I want to date but I don't want to be a girlfriend.
And as I look back over all these things I have come to think... huh. Well. Huh. Am I trans? Like, am I a gay guy?
Did I just never know, because I didn't even hear the word "trans" until my mid-20s, and it took me a long time to even have the headspace and clarity to try to learn about it and suss all this out because other things in my life happened that took all my mental energy? Are all the reasons I gave myself for all the things I felt and imagined and wanted when I was younger just the only things I could think of at the time given my upbringing, and if I were born 20 years ago instead of 40 years ago, would I even question if I were trans or not, or would I just know? Are those things gender dysphoria? I never knew the term until I started watching YouTube and lurking on reddit. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal because of any of those things. They bothered me, sure.
I don't even know what I'd do if I am actually trans. Absolutely no idea. It's just been several months now pondering all this and I thought I might now have enough clear in my head to even frame the question to ask you guys. Thanks for your thoughts, if any. Thanks for reading all that, at any rate. Have a wonderful day!