The millionth person on the internet thinking they're original for having gender issues or something.

I am lost. Like truly at the end of the road and I no longer know what to do. I am sorry that this is going to be a long post but my feelings are actually tearing me apart.

I'm straight male and have been losing my mind. For quite some time I've been really annoyed that I wasn't born a woman. I have been dealing with severe depression and several undiagnosed mental disorders for years as well.

This all started when one thing led to another and I thought it would be funny to take hostage pictures of myself to use as profile pictures on discord. I ended up liking them. Like REALLY liking them (non-sexually, I feel like I need to say this). I usually hate my face in pictures. It makes me really uncomfortable, but at that time I had slightly longer hair and then when the tape covered up my eyes and mouth something just made me drop my jaw. I fell in love with those pictures to the point it became my online persona. I did look kinda like a woman in them though.

Since then I've had a few rare moments where I dream or lucidly day dream about being a woman and it makes me feel so weird from the inside, nothing I have ever felt before and I can't describe. It's like my heart is pumping out good feeling juice, like I'm getting hugged from the inside (I've never actually felt anything while getting hugged, but I imagine this is what it should be like).

This is weird, never before have I had any signs or even a remote desire to be a woman. I never wanted to be more girly or play with girls toys/do stereotypically feminine things. And I still wouldn't want to do any of that. To be fair I have also never been much of a man. Nothing has ever motivated me to do anything that would make me more of a man. I don't want to be hypermasculine to put it simple, but I also don't want to be feminine. I cannot overstate how much I don't want to be feminine.

When I see women outside on the streets I usually feel complete apathy in those regards, however there are like 1-2% of women that make me break down on the inside and I don't even know what exactly it is about them. They tend to be dressed more plain and androgynous but still clearly women. Sometimes they dress very dark. I look at them and I just think "I want that, I want to be like that."

I however don't think I should transition. I have been thinking about it and I've been trying to socially transition in safe online spaces, but that's when the dysphoria starts kicking in. Suddenly when I want to be a woman all my manly features make me really uncomfortable, like incredibly so, it actually becomes unbearable. My big hands, my wide torso, my voice, my skull. It's all giving me shivers. I have no woman like body features to be proud of or point to and am regularly forced to cut my hair short, the one thing that doesn't make me dysphoric is ironically my junk, which if anything just makes me feel like a pervert.

Not trying to be a woman doesn't make me dysphoric in any way, it all just returns to a comfortable state of apathy. It feels like I can breathe again.

I am still debating HRT on a daily basis, because I have now become afraid of what Testosterone will further do to my body. But at what cost? I will start hating myself and my body chasing an unrealistic standard. I don't want to be the next closest thing to looking like a woman. I want to look indistinguishable from a woman or remain the way I am now. I do not want to get stuck in that middle ground of being a man with breasts in womens clothing. That sounds like a nightmare.

I am not helped by the fact that my family is kinda transphobic, but I genuinely wouldn't mind just cutting that connection entirely anyway so I wouldn't say that I'm afraid.

What can I do to try and feel more like a woman without making myself more feminine?