For those who have missed my recent tweets, an old friend messaged me and showed me a paper on Gender Dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder (http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm), which basically linked together many issues I've had in life. This convinced me that what I have always thought of as a perverted kink to be ashamed of is actually a serious issue that needs professional attention. While this has given me renewed hope in the options available to me, it has also unbottled all the feelings I had thought I had put behind me.

I am incredibly thankful for the support I have had from my friends so far, both online and in person. I know that whatever happens I will always have a large group of close friends I can fall back on, and it was really good to talk about it with people at the Manchester meet yesterday. However, today was the first day since I realised the significance of my issues that the 'dysphoria' has really affected me.

I have been talking with my friend who helped me get this all out, but have really struggled to put into words how I feel. He linked me to a post he made when he first started properly dealing with this, and it pretty much summed up everything today has been:
https://pay.reddit.com/r/asktransge.....to_you/cmgdegd

This has really drained me, and I almost just went to bed when I got home this evening. I just feels like there are all these feelings inside me without any satisfactory form of release. I have felt like crying at times, but never been close enough to tears to actually cry. So I am in strange mood and don't expect to be very good company without something to distract me from it all (such as WoW), but not sure if that's healthy either.

I am not asking for help, for I am not sure there is much my friends could do that they haven't already done by just being there for me. I just need to get through this myself I think, till I am comfortable with where I am. I just don't want people thinking I don't appreciate their company and support if I start to act distant. Part of me wants to feel upset if only to justify the importance of this and to warrant the support I have been given. Sorry.

Update: So I woke up this morning and felt really stupid for posting this. My thoughts were that I am fine and lucky to have so many parts of my life as they are, and that this is just a minor thing that will probably never result in any real changes. So I was going to delete this and not be so emo about it all. But then I realised deep down I am still full of anxiety, and those initial thoughts were just me resetting to my old way of thinking about all this: bottling things up and pretending I'm a normal male. Thankfully my friend has kept reminding me that normal males wouldn't even have this dilemma, enough for me to keep this all here as a reminded to myself that no matter how my mind tries to deal with the anxiety, the solution is not to pretend I am fine.