(This might be a long and convoluted post btw)

For context: I am currently 22 and questioning my sexuality and gender. I was AMAB and have identified as male for most of my life. In the past few years, I’ve started to question myself and what actually makes me comfortable. I experimented with crossdressing at uni, then I got rid of all the clothes as soon as I came home to live with my parents. Recently I’ve been wanting to get back into it, and have ordered a bunch of clothes.

Now, yesterday someone messaged me asking why I crossdress (in a perfectly reasonable way). At first I ignored the message, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it all last night. Today I sent them a reply along the lines of ‘I do it because it makes me happy’. And it does. But that also got me thinking about what it is I like about it.

To me it’s not really a sexual thing (though I do like looking amazing), nor is it about having a particular fetish. Honestly, I truly believe I do it because it feels right (in some way) and I enjoy it.

Also, when I’m asleep, recently I’ve had dreams where I’m just living my life as a woman. Not just dressed up in women’s clothes, but actually ‘being’ a woman.

All this is a very convoluted way of me saying that, unprompted and completely at random, I just thought about living my life as a woman, and honestly how much I think I’d enjoy it. Bear in mind, I’m quite shy when it comes to crossdressing (I basically try and hide it) and I’m a very private person anyway. But I genuinely had this random thought and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Where my crossdressing persona, ‘Lily’, didn’t feel real, seeing the name written down sparked something in me. Like, for the first time, I actually wanted to be ‘Lily’ rather than just someone dressing up as her.

As the title suggests, idk if this is me coming out to myself, but for the first time, I feel like I know what I want to do. And I know it’s gonna take a lot of effort, but I think now I have a goal. Idk if it’s going to happen whilst I live with my parents, but when I move out (hopefully once I get a job), I’m gonna come back to this as some form of motivation.