I feel like the spoiler stuff is happening among our forum members at a disproportionately higher rate than the rest of the populace.
That said, we've all been through this before, so you know how we're probably going to react.
To that end and with that in mind, I'm going to ask what I feel like will be the hardest question to answer*: Are you sure?
--Patrick
*hardest because you're going to answer it here, but then you're going to answer it again and again as time goes on...to yourself, to others, to yourself again, etc.
The advice my therapist gave me was to avoid mentioning it until I knew what I wanted. The idea crossed my mind of, if I could just shut all that off, would I? And the answer is that I want to be who I am, not the presentation. It's dealing with the rest of the world that's hard about it. I've felt it's selfish to even consider because I am pretty much my wife's caretaker at times and if something happened to me, I don't know who would step in to help her. But, anything can happen to anyone, anywhere, and everything is statistics.
So short answer, am I sure on what I want? Yes, I'm sure. Financially, family, friends, etc. am I sure what's going to happen? No. But no one is. Maybe in three years I'll be renewing vows with my wife for our 10th anniversary, this time as wife and wife, and maybe we'll have a house and I'll be writing full-time, and maybe my family will visit and I'll actually have rooms for them to stay in. Or, maybe they'll want nothing to do with me anymore. Maybe I'll still be at my current job, which I like anyway, where my wife works and I might not have made as much progress as I want physically, or maybe no progress, and we'll still be in this apartment. Or some mix of any of those elements.
Right now, step one is getting over these fears, inhibitions, self-censorship, dishonesty, and so on. Right now I need to learn that it's okay to be myself.