Thank you so much for writing this. I have been near where you are for so long, though it wasn’t as bad for me because I spent my childhood in the late fifties and early sixties in a rural area where gender was never even talked about, much less questioned, so it never occurred to me to wonder what the problem was till much later; I thought I was just weird. I’ve only just come out online, and I don’t have any plans to go much further; as you said, we’ve missed so much of life, and spent so much time pretending, it would be traumatic to try to change all that now. But I’m happier now that my friends know (and none of them has tried to tell me I’m pretty!). And the country of gender’s quite big, and I don’t think everyone has to live in the big towns, so there’s room for all of us. I hope.

I also hope you don’t mind virtual hugs, because I’d very much like to give one to you.