Not sure what to do, not sure what to say, but I’m going to try.

To preface, I’m a male in my mid thirties, I’m married, work in the trades, and live in a red state. I don’t feel comfortable with the following for what I think are pretty obvious and understandable reasons. I have partially opened up about this with my wife, and while she is very understanding and supportive, I haven’t completely as I don’t completely understand it myself. I’m partially hoping writing and posting this will help me to understand who I am, and maybe start to accept it. I’ve been in pain my whole life, and I think this may be at least one of the scars on my heart.

Obviously you know where I’m going with this.

I’m not fully Trans, I’m definitely a man at least in body and mostly in soul. I’ve always felt more feminine then the men I grew up around and live and work with on the daily. I have often referred to myself as the daughter my mother never had. I not positive on the ratio, it seems to slide with my mental state. I’m bipolar and when I’m depressed it’s probably 70% male 30%female, when I’m manic it’s pretty close to 50/50 potentially 40/60 when it spikes. I dunno, it’s really hard to gage since I’ve been repressing it for most of my life.

When I was young, probably 9 or 10, I was encouraged to try on one of my cousins dresses. To my grandmother and my brothers it was really funny, they got their embarrassing photo to hold over my head and a reason to laugh at me. Not in a mocking or belittling sort of way, just a poking fun tee hee sort of way. The joking never bothered me. The thing is, I really enjoyed it. I like how I looked, it put a big smile on my face, I loved posing for the photo. Legs tucked together and bent to the side, arms extended, with hands overlapping on my knees, batting my eyelashes.

A year or two later, I started trying on my sister’s clothes, including her underwear. She lived with her mom during the week but had her own room with clothes for when she would stay with us on weekends. Durring the week I essentially had the house to myself till my parents got home as my brother would lock himself in his basement room and ignore me. So I would ‘sneak’ into her room grab some clothes and undies and try them on in the bath room looking at myself in the mirror. They never really fit right but I enjoyed it non the less.

By middle school, I had stopped all cross dressing in secret and basically pushed all those thoughts out of my head. I mostly hung out with girls and felt closer to them than I did the boys. I still had male friends but they were never really my best friends. I was pretty heavily ostracized because my family wasn’t religious and we lived in a fairly evangelical suburb. My three best friends were girls and I spent most of my free time durring school hours with them.

In high school we were allowed to dress up for Halloween, and one year a friend and I decided to dress up as girls. I was very excited, not to have an excuse to wear girls clothes in public, just to do something with a friend. My mom loved the idea and took me to goodwill to help me pick out an outfit. We decided on an early 90s valley girl kind of look. Pink knit shirt with super short sleeves the hung on the sides of my shoulders and a white skirt even got a wig to go with it. Again, when I tried it all on and looked at myself in the mirror I got really excited, a huge smile on my face, fucking loved it.

But then I got scared. Why did I like it so much? What if someone thought about it the wrong way? What if I looked or acted the part too well and people started talking? I couldn’t handle the anxiety and chickened out. Guys aren’t supposed to like dressing that way, they did it for a laugh. My friend was bummed but understood, it was just my social anxiety. No worries.

When I was a senior in high school I had a friend and roommate who just made me so happy to be around. I was dating someone at the time but she didn’t make me happy like he did. Years later I realized he might have been my first male crush, or at least the first I’d admit to myself. I can still see his smile to this day.

WARNING SUBSTANCE ABUSE and SEXUAL CONTENT

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I repressed it again, and spent my junior and senior years; all of college; and my early 20 smoking weed and doing psychedelics, self medicating. I stared drinking heavily after my girlfriend of three years, the woman who I was sure I was going to spend my life with, broke up with me and basically said she never should have dated me. She stared dating me to get with my friend. She did fall in love with me but we really weren’t right for each other. This coupled with starting to work third shift drove me deep into a bottle.

I quickly became an alcoholic, a 750 a night. The alcohol soothed the pain and helped me go to bed at 10am. This combined with the powers of the internet led to some exploitation of my desires. Trans porn, led to sissy hypno, led to female pov. I was drawn towards being on the female side of a sexual relationship. I wanted to be the woman, to please a man, to be filled.

When I found femboy stuff, I stared to not just want to be a woman in a sexual way. I envied their lithe bodies, their small breasts, their smooth skin and curves. I wanted to wear those thigh high striped stockings, with matching bra and panties. I wanted to put an a skirt and crop top.

I only recently found out about feminine chastity. I kind of want one of the really tight pink ones that kind of look like to have a clit. I’ve tried a training dildo before and didn’t find it went in far enough, now i want a full sized, but am terrified of being caught.

Realize this has been over the span of 10+ years. During this time I had a few girlfriends, a few flings, sucked a total of one dick, and eventually met my wife.

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She came from a catholic background, and while she has given up Catholicism, she is still very modest. She’s a horse girl, jeans, loose tee shirts, cowboy boots. She’s thin and tomboyish, maybe that’s what drew me to her when we met. I was very drunk that night and even though I was at the party to try and hook up with another girl, when I saw my future wife I was infatuated immediately, I felt like even though I was talking to the group I was actually just talking to her.

I want to embrace this feminine side of me but I’m afraid of it. I like watching auctions because it helps me jot spend money on stupid shit (most of the time). The other day there was a cute rave skirt, basically booty shorts with a black lace draping from waist to ankles, a pink bob cut wig, and a blue white and pink long curly wig with pig tails. I could picture my self in them and liked what I saw. I added them to my watch list, but as soon as they hit the first page I got nervous and removed them. How would I explain it? Would I have to hide them? Could I actually get myself to wear them in my home, at a Halloween party, or god forbid in public?

Who am I? What should I do? Am I allowed to embrace this side of me? Is Nissa allowed to exist? Am I allowed be be Nissa, even just some times? Do it push her away again, bury it again? I’ve already burned her/my clothes once, threw away the make up. If I do embrace it, will I actually buy myself the clothes I want? Will I wear them? Will I feel good about how I look? Will I have to hide it? Will I end up burning them again?

As much as I’m not Nissa, I am Nissa. Always have been, since before I was born when my mom hoped I was her daughter. Nissa was my first name.

But am I allowed to call myself by that name?

As a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, the answer is yes, of course I can. Embrace who I really am. Buy the clothes, wear the clothes, call myself Nissa, even if just from time to time. But I also only just grew into who I am as a man, a loud, confident man. A man who wears fun colors and three piece suits. Who wants to stand out and be the guy who can talk to anyone and everyone.

As Nissa I don’t know who I am, I’d like to know but the fear is real.

Part of me wants to be accepted but part of me wants to be rejected, to be given another excuse to give up.

Regardless of what you say, I’ll probably still doubt myself. Question if it’s real. If I, Nissa, am real. And if I am, should I be?

Thank you for your time

• Love, Nissa

P.S. I’ve been writing and reading and rewriting this over the last few day, and the more I do the more I visualize me as Nissa. Wearing the clothes, swaying my hips, long curly hair done up in pig tails and fun colors. It’s made me smile on the inside a bit more than usual