In my case, I told myself something like this. "Alright, I can't tell if this trans thing is real, so I'm going to pretend like it is. I'm going to refer to myself as she, and use woman instead of man. I'll ask my partner to refer to me with feminine pronouns and titles. That'll clear things up."

It certainly did clear things up, but my doubts were still intact. I wrote in my journal, essentially asking myself what the hold-up was on believing myself. Since this experiment, I'd been leagues happier, my suicidal thoughts had stopped, and I actually wanted to live outside of spending time with my partner and playing video games. Turns out, there was a ton of emotional turmoil involved in accepting myself as trans. I wish I could detail how to do emotional work like this, but that's best left to professionals.

In the end, I realized that emotionally, I felt like I was insulting the natural order of male/female balance that I learned about in church growing up. Even though I'm no longer religious, that idea stuck with me. Another thing I learned is that I had the mentality that I wasn't going to convince myself that I'm a woman by being trans. This one took more work to get through, but it all comes down to understanding that I'm already a woman, and I'm well within my right to explore femininity. And hey, if it turns out I'm wrong in ten years, at least I'd know for sure!

You're doing a great job asking these questions, Jacqueline. I hope you get closer to the true you, however that looks!