Trans doubt is a nice little person that likes to spend all of its time messing with me. Whenever I start to feel secure in my trans identity, trans doubt likes to swoop down and plague me. My mind likes to spend all of its time questioning my trans identity and I have no room to explore my gender due to being closeted from the entire world. I can't tell if I would even like a male name and he/him pronouns, because I have nowhere to explore that. I am fairly sure that I do get happy when people I don't know 'misgender' me and call me a guy. However, my happiness immediately fades because I start feeling like a major fraud, it literally makes me feel physically sick. I have no one to help me with this, and I can barely help myself. I have to try and deal with everything myself which takes up so much time in my brain, I can't think about both myself and my school. It distracts my mind from my school work, I can barely think at school and I barely care about grades anymore. I truly don't know how to deal with everything, the only answers I have seem to come up with are self destructive which I try to stop but can never seem to be able to. Everything leads me into a circle of thinking not masc enough to be trans, and thinking that I will regret transitioning and dislike being seen as male by people. However, at the same time I spend so much time dreaming of people seeing me as a guy, getting rid of my female body, and dreaming of looking like almost every male actor/person I know. In addition, when I am sure that I am trans (for the brief moments of time that is true) I cant' even fathom coming out, it scares the shit out of me. Nothing I do is productive anymore, I don't feel like myself anymore, I feel like I am constantly hiding, a massive fraud that everyone will hate, and I feel numb so much of the time. Schoolwork and grades that used to be important to me, aren't as much anymore. I don't know how to feel like myself again, and I have absolutely no clue if I'm really trans. Everything just feels like a dream/nightmare that I don't want to live.
What you are currently doing is questioning your identity. Nobody does that if they're completely cisgender. At the very least, you are non-binary. Now, when signing up to this forum, you put yourself down as male. You made your pronouns "He". A cis person would certainly never do that. As for "not being masc enough", being masculine is not sufficient or necessary to being male. What about all the gay guys around here rocking their femme personalities? They're as male as anyone else. Let's address your predicament, that is, being in the closet. It is possible to explore even without being out in person. This forum is an excellent place to try out names and pronouns, and practise interacting with people in the way you truly feel like interacting. I'm out to a grand total of one person and that hasn't stopped me from figuring out I'm male. I'll admit it, uncertainty still remains, but it probably always will to an extent unless my situation changes and somehow I am able to come out completely. Just hang around here for a bit, see how you feel. Maybe practise "cross-dressing" (for lack of a better term) and see how you like looking somewhat like a male. Then you can at least get an idea of who you really are.
Trans doubt is super shitty, and I suffered from it a long time, and I'm really sorry. Hearing transmedicalist narratives probably hasn't helped either. You're real and valid, man.
