Being transgendered and your true self

What does finding our true self mean? For me this is a complex question and I guess centers around why I started this quest for personal growth two years ago. Then it focused mostly on religion and confronting the psychological issues. Not the corner of my soul that terrified me and still does, but confronting it is what is needed.

It means finding out what is meant by who I am. Going by biological sex, I am male and always have been. The fact that I can quote Dune and Star Trek does not help my credibility as a woman. (No, it's the fact that I can quote a lot of Dune and Star Trek. Being able to quote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy word for word doesn't count. That book is holy.) Nor does it help when you've spent hours in EQ or in Role playing games or with your nose buried in fantasy and sci-fi novels. Who we are is a complex issue for individuals struggling with gender identity.

For a brief time in my life, I tried dealing with things exactly as they are. It also helped me get through things at the time. (I was still living with my mother and she thought I and my sister were trying to kill her.) That wasn't the time to worry about my issues. She needed my help. She needed professional help and we could not make her stay in the hospital.

The method of dealing with things as they are breaks down when I try to confront any aspect of my gender. My mind knows one thing and my body shows another. We as children learn appropriate societal behavior which further confuses the issue. Which is the reality of that situation? Being a programmer, I tend to evaluate such things as an either/or proposition. Instead it's better handled under an "and" statement and letting the rational part of your brain go nuts for a while until it figures it out. (Those of you who do not deal in
Boolean logic may not have to worry about this.) You're biologically male and psychologically female.

If you have read down this far, you can see I've buried a part of my soul and I hoped at some points in my life, that it would never come back again. How do I get that person back again, or rather, who that person has become despite my attempts to bury her.

The truth is I don't know how to get her back easily. I guess this is why therapy is required. I do not believe however, that therapy is the whole picture. In order to even get there, I need to overcome my own fears and only recently have I even admitted fully what I was to myself. If you're in the same situation, I wish you luck. (I hope you wish me luck, too.) On the other hand, if you're a Fundamentalist Christian who feels the need to pray for me, please don't. I really don't need a manual transmission going out on me four times again which is what happened the last time a co-worker felt this need. By the way, does anyone want to take up the political cause of making stick-shift friendly to left-handed people?