Dysphoria with responsibilities

I keep having waves of severe dysphoria every few days but I feel like I can't talk about it or even do anything to help it because of my situation. I always have so many people looking at me, my wife, my parents, my friends. I'm afraid to lose them, I'm afraid they'll look at me differently, I'm afraid of making their lives any more difficult than they already are. I feel like such a burden most days. In order for me to be comfortable and happy I would have to be selfish and become a burden to all the people I care about.
I hate myself for being this way.

Getting to know you - Part 1

When I was born, my mother named me after herself. She was incredibly excited to be having a girl since she already had a son, my brother Drew who is 7 1/2 years older than me. When I look at baby pictures of myself, it's hard to say just what my personality really was besides full of smart ass, but those pink frills sure let people know I was a girl!

My mother was raised in the country so she didn't think much of it when I started getting older and climbing everything(I began climbing before I could even crawl.), running around outside, playing sports and leaning towards t-shirts and jeans rather than a dress. Once though, she tried to throw me in this awful, white, tutu looking dress that I despised and ,on top of that, she wanted to curl my hair... I ran through that house screaming, I could accept a lot of things for my mother but I guess I just couldn't do that, lol.

When I was about 4 or 5 everyone started to notice that I was not very girly at all. All I ever drew were aliens, monsters and reptiles eating things. I always played the husband or boyfriend when the girls made me play house with them, I would tell people I was a boy after I chopped my hair off, all of my friends were boys and ,what I didn't tell people, is that I had constant dreams of becoming a boy.

All of this seems pretty straightforward but at the same time I also had two men in my life that were either mentally of physically abusive. What if my masculinity has more to do with feeling stronger and therefore less vulnerable?

All of these things got progressively worse over time, there were moments in middle and high school that I tried to be feminine but would always crash and burn. I never felt comfortable dressing like a girl, but as a boy, I felt confident and relaxed.

Through out high school, I got more and more masculine until I was binding with ace wraps that were jerry rigged with other pieces to form a flat chest, my hair was cut short, the only clothes I would wear were male, I even had an alter ego that was male. All characters in video games were male, all of my drawings when I thought of myself were male, it just kept going.

I didn't even know what being transgender was until I was 18 and a friend had to sit me down after I broke down crying again staring into the mirror while I was trying to get ready(another attempt at being a girl). When she explained it all to me, it felt like a light bulb came on. "You can do that?" I always thought it was a crazy, impossible dream.
She let me borrow one of her shorter cosplay wigs and a hat, threw on a make shift binder and took me out to a supermarket. She made a point to use male pronouns and call me by a male name and I felt really good for the first time in so long.

I'll stop it here and pick up with the actual first attempt at transition later.

Thank you for reading everyone
-Gabe

Meet Gabe

Hi everyone,

My name is Gabe and I'm a 24 year old transman living in Austin, Texas.
Due to life being more than a little crazy and the fact that I just don't really have many people I feel like I can open up to, I decided to start a blog.

I'm married (6months now!) to a wonderful woman, I'm a jack of all trades that has done a little bit of everything. I ran my own costuming business, worked construction, built websites, worked in retail, factories and offices. I like to draw, make costumes for conventions and renfests, build things with my hands and play video games.

I seem a lot more calm and right now but I get pretty weird, so you've been warned!


The next post will be starting from my childhood.
I've been needing to get a lot of thoughts out of my head for years now.


Thanks for reading.
-Gabe