I apologize in advance for the mostly unstructured rant, I just made this account and have never posted anywhere before, but I felt I needed to get this off my chest.
It's been a long journey for me. I remember having feelings of wanting to be a girl ever since right before High School (around Age 12-13), and a few faint memories even potentially before that, which combined with a number of events transpiring in more recent years of my life, through much self reflection and discovery, I realized that I am trans. In early October of last year, at age 21, I came out to my parents before anyone else (outside of technically my dog, who I more so talked to to get courage of what to say to any humans), saying "I think I'm trans," using "I think" mostly as a buffer in case things went very wrong (My mom appears generally supportive of the LGBT+ community, but said some things in the past making me unsure of her true stance on transgender people, while my dad is a literal boomer, who is often set in his ways, so I wasn't sure how either would react). It wasn't terrible, we found an LGBTQIA+ friendly therapist for me to go to, and he's helped me out a lot. More recently I officially told them that yes, I am indeed a transgender woman. Thus begins my predicament...
Their reaction to the actually confident coming out has been a mixed bag. Every time I talk to them, it gets rather frustrating. Neither of my parents seem to understand much about the transgender experience (which I get to an extent), and it can lead to some weird and uncomfortable questions. My dad tends to ask lots of questions in rapid fire, but is clearly at least trying to understand, although he's gone on record saying he thinks I should wait 1 or 2 years before I take any major steps. Meanwhile, pretty much every question from my mom feels like she's trying to convince me I'm wrong. Most frustrating is that it feels like I'm damned in her eyes by both the things I've said and the things I didn't say in the past. Using "I think" when I came out, not liking stereotypically "girly things" when I was younger, apparently never talking about wanting to be a girl when I was younger (when I know for a fact I did express these thoughts at least a few times... although in this case I don't know if I ever did express it to them specifically). No matter what I say them, they just don't seem to want to believe that their baby "boy" may never have been a boy to begin with.
My sister, the only other person I've come out to in my life outside of my therapist, is far more understanding, being both queer herself and being a magnet for queer friends, but its very difficult to go about with my life considering my parents. I'm currently at college, have another semester to go after this one, but soon I'll be moving back in with my parents for the summer and I'm just... tired. I'm tired of pretending I'm something I'm not. I'm tired of having to try and justify myself to people who don't seem to want to understand me, don't want to see me for who I really am, even when I'm trying to let them see me for the first time in 10 or so years. I don't have financial independence from them yet, because they're helping me pay for college, as well as my therapist at the moment. Speaking of college, I'm basically expected to finish college and get a job in the workforce, with it basically being implied that I should put the trans stuff on hold until that is done. The thing is, every day I wake up, it gets harder to get out of bed, harder to care about the classes I'm taking or the major I'm going into, or even to care about potential job prospects in the future. It's harder to keep up the mask of the supposed cis male, and I think I'm getting burned out by doing so. I'm only keeping going because of the hope that one day, whenever that day may be, things will get better.
I just don't know what to do. Even with all of their flaws, I still love them, and I want to keep them in my life... I don't want to have to cut them out of it. But I've been living the past 10 years on autopilot, doing things "the way I'm supposed to," and I don't want to live the lie anymore. I just want to look in the mirror and recognize the person in it. I don't know what's so hard for my parents to get about that. I haven't had that many people I could consistently rely on over the years, but my parents were pretty much always there. I'm willing to leave them behind if I really have to, but that doesn't make the thought of it any less painful or exhausting. I've discussed with my therapist potentially doing a joint session with my parents, but I'm not sure how much that would actually help getting them to understand my side of things. I just... I don't know what to do anymore.