I have definitely felt the pressure of making a decision and sticking to it before I'm ready, especially when it comes to gender identity. If you look through the early pages of my dorm thread, you can kind of see what was going on in my thoughts when I first joined the guild. I came here because I needed help and advice from people who knew more about this gender identity thing than I did, while still enjoying the anonymity and casual facelessness of the internet. I wanted to learn more about what each identity meant so I could finally know just what the hell I was, especially considering that I didn't have a proper introduction to gender identity until my college years.
My advice to you is to relax and take your time. You don't need to please or convenience anybody. Working with people and understanding their positions as cisgender people who don't fully understand what it feels like to be trans* is always a good thing, but you have to separate the act of respecting your family, friends and teachers and
conveniencing your family, friends and teachers. Don't force yourself to stay in a mold you don't fit into just because you don't want to make things more complicated for other people.
I have yet to officially come out to a lot of people as transgender, even though I already know that that's what I am. I want to wait until I start taking HRT so there can't ever be any confusion, so that there's no point in questioning it anymore. I don't expect myself to back out of my decision, but I do expect that there will be people who will make me doubt myself and question my sanity, be it out of love or disdain. In the meantime, the way I see it is that I don't have to prove or identify myself as anything publicly. I am who and what I am, take it or leave it, and there is no reason in the world why I should be obligated to tell all and sundry, "BTW, I'm a man." I know I'm a man. I look in the mirror and see a man every day. Sure, I've got these blobby chesticles, a severe lack of facial and body hair, and a
spectacular feminine a**, but that doesn't matter to me half as much as the fact that I already know who I am and I know that, eventually, I will become physically one with my mental self. In the meantime, ******** everybody else's smarmy eye sockets; they're blind, dumb, deaf, stupid and absolutely hilarious if they look at me and see a cisgender woman, LOL. ^ , ^
TL;DR: Don't rush. Take your time and search yourself thoroughly before making any declarations to the public. Understand that your identity depends on you alone, your mental state, and that the convenience of other people should never take presidence over what your mind and body are telling you. It takes time for people with a great deal of empathy, anxiety or sensitivity to properly filter out the desire to please others, but over time, it will get easier, the clouds will clear and you will be able to proudly and confidently identify as what you really are. Until then, remain calm and remember that no matter what you do or say, no matter what others think or how others treat or call you, you will always be the same person you are and your gender will always be the same, no matter how long it takes you to identify what that gender and person is.
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