It's been a little while since I've made a post here, mainly because I haven't had to. I've been relatively OK. I've talked about my thoughts about my gender identity to my therapist and she's helped a lot. One of the big pieces of advice she gave was that there is no rush, I don't need to constantly be searching for pieces of my identity, I can just sort of keep an eye out. I've been noticing the times when I feel really like myself and the times when I feel I'm acting how people want me to act. I think I've got a pretty good picture of who I am now, and I feel a lot more confident about saying that I'm a girl. so uhh, now what? I still haven't told anyone except my therapist and the people here. I guess there's no rush to move on to the next step, but I have to do something about this at some point. I don't really know about coming out yet, that's sort of a scary thought. I originally thought it seemed scary because all of this was so new, but now time has passed and it doesn't really feel new anymore, but it's still scary. Logically, the next step is coming out. I explored my identity, found an answer, sat with that answer for a while and it still feels right, so next logical step is to tell people about it. But emotionally, I feel like there's something else to do, some way I can prepare to make the last step easy, and I can't tell if its fear or there's actually something else I should do.
Hi Mattie, first of all it's great that you've come out to yourself - it's probably the biggest and most crucial step - but before you tell everyone else there's another two, I'd argue. 1) Asking yourself what kind of girl am I? How would you like to present yourself to the world? What are the qualities you would like to have? and 2) A name. Ideally the answer to 2) would reflect 1). When I was at the same stage you are, I instinctively knew I was a 'Beth'. For me, the name chose itself - there's a gutsiness to it, as well as a femininity. And funnily enough so many people, once I came out to them, said that Beth really suited me, which made me beam with pleasure! Good luck! Beth x
