You are all so incredibly thoughtful and perceptive. I don't know I need a therapist! (but will get one anyway) This life altering realization is truthfully rather exciting and that is an important part of why I want to talk about it. Thank goodness for you anonymous folks who I can share with safely!

I have been spent a lifetime with a hole in my heart. It seemed to be about an important part of me that never grew up. I mentioned on another support group that the part of me that never grew up was a 12 year old girl. Did I get a dopeslap for that! It was about an hour later when someone said that maybe the hole in my heart was about a little girl who never got to be a woman. A little girl still stuck inside this man's body. This hit me like the sky had fallen.

Over the next few days I learned about gender dysphoria and was amazed how many others have had the same history. Suddenly puzzling, difficult, and repressed parts of my life surfaced in a new light and they made sense. One of the most important things is how I have always preferred to be "one of the girls" in social settings and been strangely offended by comments that something I said or did was "just like a man."

Anyway, I love you all for letting me share and your sharing back. For the time being, this is the only safe place to tell the whole truth. I hope I can keep this interesting enough for you to hang in there with me while I sort out a very big, and difficult issue. I do need your help and appreciate it beyond words.

To respond to an excellent observation, I do have no intentions of changing myself into a more "womanly" person by behaviour, cross dressing, hormones, or surgery. What I see as my objective is to uncover the repressions of a lifetime and learn to accept the person in my skin. I would like to somehow let that 12 year old abandoned girl who still lives inside find a voice and help me finish growing up whole.