Hello AlwaysChanging2: I don't know as I really have much of anything I can contribute here. But I want to try. I've given up all efforts to assuage that part of my psyche that is / wants to be female. I now see myself as simply a solitary, generic, mostly genderless old person.

After I got out of the hospital the last time, I started seeing a therapist who works with a lot of transgender clients... many of them older (not as old as me for the most part... but older...) She encouraged me to do some things to, I guess you might say, bring out my femininity (?) Of course, I was already familiar with this idea having watched lots of transsexual videos on YouTube & having done quite a bit of reading. (Plus I had cross-dressed in secret for years as well.) But actually starting to do things that people could see was a new experience for me. I started shaving my body hair, wearing (clear) nail polish, & I started growing my hair out... among other things. It felt both freeing &, at the same time, awkward & embarrassing. Sort-of both real & a delusion at the same time, I guess you could say.

Unfortunately, what I found was that each thing I did, just left me wanting to go a step further. Whatever I did was never enough. But I knew there was a definite limit to how far I could go. So, in the end, I just decided to give it all up & just be a generic old person. To some extent, since I almost never go anywhere anyway, it doesn't really matter anyway.

Personally I think you just have to take your transition one step at a time & see where it leads. See what feels comfortable & what perhaps feels like too much, at least at the moment. Try not to worry too much about where it's all going to end up. Maybe you'll ultimately transition completely. Maybe you'll find some comfortable resting place short of full transition. Time will tell. But what you see is, from my perspective, real. It is the reality (at least the temporary reality) of a person trying to live life in two genders.