I had a lot of similar thoughts and fears when I started to question. I had a couple different alt accounts, because I deleted them in shame initially. It took me sometime to get comfortable with the idea that whether I was trans or not, it didn’t matter; there was nothing wrong with being trans.

I’m a trans woman, and I can only speak really to my own experiences. Society really, really wants to hammer home that we should be cishet (our gender identity aligns with our assigned sex, and we’re only attracted to the opposite sex). But homosexuality, for instance, occurs outside of humans in other animals; it’s just as natural as heterosexuality.

There’s also many more identities that you may identify with than just binary male/female ones, so that’s something to consider (maybe you feel a little of both, or like neither quite fits you). And of course, you don’t have to label yourself at all.

No one can tell you whether your trans or not, it’s something you have to decide for yourself. But whether you’re a trans woman can also be a simple question: Do you want to be, or do you feel like, a woman? If yes to one of those, then there’s a good chance :)

A question that helped me when I was questioning (there’s no right answer, it’s just a thinking exercise): If someone gave you a button that would make you a woman in every way (but it couldn’t be reversed), and the world was adjusted to have always thought you were one, would you push the button?

I think it’s important to emphasize, in case you have doubts, that you don’t have to have felt this way since childhood. I, for one, only started to feel any sort of dysphoria in my teen years, and some don’t experience dysphoria at all.

I’ll caution you that my experiences below will not be sugarcoated, so if you aren’t prepared to read some of the mildly less pleasant experiences, I suggest you stop here. This is in regards to your statement about being able to live as a dude, a sentiment I shared just as strongly when I questioned.

Like you, I once thought I could live with just being a dude to everyone, and myself as a woman at home. After I came out, I was made to feel so disgusted by myself, like I was doing something wrong, that I backed out of transitioning. It was the worst few months of my life, like a constant fire under the skin that never quite burned, but prickled with pain regardless.

I did start back on the process of transitioning, but due to financial reasons, I’m forced to live as a guy in most situations to this day. I have significantly less social dysphoria than most, but it’s still gotten to me. It’s still eating me alive. It hurts the most coming from parents who know, but continue to use my deadname. I even begged for them to just use a gender neutral version of my deadname and ‘they’ if my name or ‘she’ was too much for them. It hurts that I can’t tell the rest of my family because they’re all heavily conservative.

I was told I should learn to appreciate and live with what god gave me. I was always made to feel silly and excessive for wanting to be a woman. But I’ve got to tell you. Having breasts is fucking amazing! Years later, and I can tell you, I appreciate my body a whole lot more; I’m still blown away every time I’m reminded I have them, even when it’s painful, lol.

I always thought I liked my facial hair. But really, it’s one of the only things men actually are ‘allowed’ to style. But with the removal of that hair came an inexplicable feeling of relief. When I see my face, I feel so much more right. People were even pissed at me for having long hair, thinking it their right to tell me to cut it. I actually came out to my parents partly because they were insisting I had to cut my hair, and it was pissing me off.

I don’t pass at all. Even if I do get the opportunity to escape my current circumstances, I’m not sure how I’ll handle socially transitioning. Especially with the political climate where I live. But I can say that not doing so has taken its toll on me, and that every day it becomes harder and harder to live with. And yet, I don’t regret understanding who I am. I can’t tell you how much less miserable I’ve been since accepting myself. That’s not always enough, but… Everything would have been way worse if I’d continued to deny who I was. I’ll never know a reality where I can just live as myself around everyone, but even if it’s just me, by myself, I’m much happier than I used to be.