Coming out to myself

Hello. My name is Chris and I've been rejecting myself for a good 8 years or so. Coming out to myself I live in CA in a pretty liberal area, which is good. Berkeley is close and SF as well, both hubs of individualism and equality. I do not go there and those areas have had no influence on me. I am, however, accepting of all different types of people out there, except for myself as it turns out.

I'm just going to say it. I think I'm trans. I wish I had a nice pair of boobs and wear gorgeous clothing. I wish I could wear skin tight pants. However, I only realized this in middle school, when everybody calls people "gay" if they don't like them. So I was always afraid and mentally I told myself I was "normal". I am straight, however. I am attracted to girls, so if I did eventually get a sex change I would be a lesbian.

I was depressed pretty much throughout middle school (here it's grades 6 through 8), and I finally started playing football my freshman year of high school to help fit in/ feel better about myself. So the oppression I was feeling was not of society, but it was inside of me eating away at who I really am.

In the past I just thought I liked cross-dressing; I didn't even know there was such a thing as transgender/transexual (sorry if I get termonology wrong, I'm new to this stuff) but in high school I started looking at transgender videos on youtube and then I would go through a freak out thing wherGenerally in e I would stop looking at trans stuff because of the whole "what would other people think" thing. This part of my life when I started doing drugs. Weirdly enough, my grades improved and I started getting more friends. My confidence increased because of football (I don't know why, I never really cared for the sport and I never wanted to play in games).

My drug... "problem" is what got me "caught". Every night I would crossdress and when I was done I would hide the clothes out of sight so nobody would find out. Some asshole (pardon my language) who I bought weed from got caught and told his parents that I sold to him, that I was a dealer. His parents called my parents and my parents searched my room when I was watching the varsity football game. Guess what they find. It wasn't anything drug related that's for sure.

After I got caught with my crossdressing clothes I stopped and dressed like a guy for the remainder of high school. Now I also felt guilt associated with it as well. My parents are "accepting" but I don't feel comfortable telling them anything, and we all know it's hard. Now I'm in college and I completely forgot about that part of my life, until on youtube I stumbled across a gorgeous trans girl. I wished it could be me, but I did the whole freak out thing where I close the trans videos and say to myself that I'm a guy and that I'm 100% fine the way I am. Next day, I find the videos again and watch other people's success, wishing it was me. This was probably a few days ago.

I just did the COGIATI survey on transsexual.org. (literally while I was writing this, I went and did it) It says that it "has classified your internal gender identity to be essentially androgynous, both male and female at the same time, or possibly neither"

I know this survey is in no way conclusive and that I would need a therapist or something to tell me correctly, but it does tell me what I previously thought. I know/ strongly believe I have an internal gender issue. It's not 100%, as I feel perfectly comfortable as a man yet I also have the desire to be a woman (but not look like one of those half man half woman creatures). I was born a man. If I was born a woman, I would be just as comfortable. It's taken me 19 years of my life to figure this out. :eusa_danc

Sorry for the long story, as this coming out story was an internal battle with myself that has taken place for over half of my life.