EDIT: Thanks for everyone's kind words and support. I'm not sure how to reply to most of them, but just know I read all of them. I will be seeking out therapy and figuring out what's right for me this week. Thanks so much.
I hope this is the right place for this.
So, I've been having conversations with some of my trans-friends that have been making me think about things in my life.
Let's start with background.
When I was little, I always knew I wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a girl so badly, even from when I was like six years old. Part of it was certainly that I was treated differently than my sister and made to feel guilty for being a boy because I was "just like my father" which is an insane thing to dump on a six year old. Yet, part of it was also sincere. I remember once my mom told me to be careful what I wished for or I just might get it and I spent months wishing I was slowly turning into a girl, just telling myself the process would be slow but I just had to keep wishing and praying for it. I remember a friend telling me about a video game they had that included a station for brewing potions and I was secretly obsessed with trying to find a gender changing potion (surely not in the game, but I was a kid who just wanted it to be real).
When I was 12 my mom caught me putting on my sisters clothes and put the fear of God in me and told me to never do it again, like she did with most things she didn't understand when it came to me. I stopped trying to do it, and I remember feeling very conflicted and crying a lot about giving up my dream of becoming a girl.
In high school though, I would often crossdress for Halloween, lied to myself and others and that it was just a fun silly thing to do. (To be clear my mother was around a lot less in high school so I was able to hide the fact that I did this from her) But if it was just for fun why did I slather my whole body with Nair to be more feminine? Why did I feel so good about how I looked in that one dress? Why did I spend so long gazing in the mirror and loving the feeling and wanting it to be real?
As an adult, I realized I was always more excited about pretty dresses and buying them for my girlfriends than they were about them. That I was more excited by the trappings of femininity than they were, and that maybe deep down it was because I was trying to live vicariously through them.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s, though, and I didn't even really know that being trans and transitioning was even really an option until I was pushing into my late twenties when I first started realizing trans people existed and had existed. I have always felt an affinity for the trans community, obviously, because to an extent I understood the experience.
But for 20 years I have spent my time making excuses for why I can't or won't consider the idea that I'm trans. "I'm too tall. I'm going bald (starting balding in my twenties). My hands and feet are too big. My hips are to narrow, my chest too deep. I'm too hairy. I would be an ugly woman and I want to be pretty, not ugly. I'll end up alone and unloved." I guess only more recently it hit me that if I'm making excuses for why I can't do it, then somewhere it means that I do want to do it still. That dream never really went away. The desire to be pretty and feminine never stopped, I just hid it away really well and constantly told myself that this was the body and life I had and that I had to get over it.
I'm in the USA, and I know this is pretty much the worst time to be reckoning with these feelings, but as I already have cancer, already am on the path to trying to get on disability, and already am on Medicaid, which the plan I am on in my state (Washington) covers a large portion of the aspects of transitioning (HRT, hair removal, facial feminization surgery, body contouring surgery, top surgery, and bottom surgery) it feels like it could be the last chance I have to stop telling myself excuses for why I can't be who I always wanted to be.
Part of it is I had one of my friends convincing me to try one of those gender-swap faceapps where they still adhere to your actual face shape, and my god, I was on the verge of tears, I didn't look ugly like I thought I would. I ended up staring at it for hours and looking at my face from every angle and wondering why I had lied to myself about the possibility of being pretty.
I don't know why I'm writing this other than to get it out and there and maybe field advice from the community. I'm seeing my psychiatrist this week and I'm going to ask her if the agency I'm at has any counselors who specialize in gender dysphoria/body dysmorphia. I figure I may as well talk to a professional about it for a while to try to come to more clear conclusions.
Does anyone have advice for someone in their mid-forties finally exploring this for real and trying to decide if it's for them? I know it won't solve all my problems, I know it won't magically make me happy when I have had chronic depression all my life from other trauma I have experienced... I just, I don't know, I'm going through a lot of changes in my life anyway due to my cancer and having to start my life over, part of me feels like maybe I should start it over the way I actually want to, then.
I hope this wasn't too long of a ramble, and I appreciate anyone who hears me out and cares to tell me anything that would be helpful, supportive, or make me feel more at ease at the idea or transitioning so late in life while my country wants to make what I desire even harder to achieve.
The word you're looking for is "pillory."
I probably have been playing too much Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.