[25 AMAB] GOCD plus maybe something else?

Long post:

My feelings about gender are complicated. As a kid I tried on my mom’s shoes, but so did my brothers. My (admittedly liberal) mom reads nothing into it. I briefly grew my hair out as a preteen to medium length. It felt kind of anxious/ocd, and it may have been due to a desire to be cuter. It’s a murky memory though. Since high school I have had some discomfort about my secondary sex characteristics and have disliked seeing my own reflection. One time back when I was a teenager I asked about if life would have been easier/better as a girl, and imagined hypothetically what a girl version of me would be like. I even maybe wondered if that if reincarnation is real, then maybe I could possibly reincarnate as a girl. I’m an agnostic so who knows? In high school I also obsessively looked at pictures of cute anime art, mostly girls. I hoped also to find occasional anime art with guys drawn with the cute big eyes of female characters, and I hoped that if I were drawn in such a style I’d have big cute eyes too. It felt ocd at the time but now it does make me wonder. At some point in high school I noticed that girls dress more interesting than guys. In college I even envied certain girls’ outfits, although maybe I did in my later high school years as well. Since I discovered what femboys were in 2022 I have been consciously thinking about it and obsessed with it, with alternating periods of repression/near normalcy and intense obsessive periods. I no longer repress it and now it’s intense, just more tolerable than it was before I discussed it with my therapist. I have gender ocd, but, you know. It feels complicated. I hope my gender feelings are real. My main fear isn’t being GNC, nonbinary, or maybe even trans. My fear is that my gender feelings are fake. When I seek reassurance it’s other hope that I get validation that my feelings are real and that it’s not my ocd gaslighting me by making me have fake dysphoria, fake longing, and fake envy and be delusional. I’ve heard heard that gender ocd affects both cis and trans people but differs in presentation. Cis people have trans ocd and fear being trans and don’t want to be trans. Trans people doubt if they’re really trans and fear they may be cis and fooling themselves when they have cis ocd. Mine? Not sure if it fits either pattern, but it may be closer to the trans pattern than the cis pattern. How do I feel about being a guy? Meh I guess? Ok maybe? Tolerable, but do I even like it? Nothing’s interesting or exciting about it. Not so sure about that. I’m not comfortable with my masculine secondary sex characteristics (facial hair, body hair, facial structure, even shoulders). How much is ocd, I don’t know. How about the idea of being a girl? More exciting but I’m not sure if it’s me. I like the idea of softer skin and less hair. I kind of like the idea of more feminine features due to fat distribution. I might not mind small boobs. I wouldn’t necessarily mind a few curves either. I like the idea of being cute and pretty in a way, and women’s clothes are so much more interesting. Being somewhere in between, nonbinary, girlboy? That has some appeal. Smooth skin, small boobs, a few curves, no facial hair, a more feminine face, being pretty and cute, all without the baggage of being a full women. I don’t necessarily want to be a cis woman, but I wouldn’t necessarily hate it either. As for estrogen’s effects, I think I might like the facial fat redistribution, smoother skin, and slowed body and facial hair growth. Boobs? Small may be fine, as I’ve said before. A few curves would be ok too. What I don’t want is to get baby fever, although it seems to not be a universal side effect. I also don’t like the idea of period like symptoms every month: if only tolerate them if estrogen would make me feel better overall in spite of them. I’ve thought about what if I tried it for a week or two, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea. Would I be risking permanent side effects, or would it help me figure things out? I’ve heard subtle but permanent breast growth can happen after two weeks. This whole thing is weird, isn’t it? I passively accepted that I was male for my whole life, that things were what they were, and still see myself as such now, regardless of my questions.