I need to get this off my chest...

I'll probably never be able to tell my friends or my family any of this, all I'll say might sound silly and maybe childish, but it comes from the depths of my heart, and confuses me a whole lot. I'm 18 male, born in a conservative family, I mostly keep a facade of good christian kid with them, though I'm an atheist liberal. Anyway, I always had random thoughts about what it'd be like being a girl, but always set it aside as a natural curiosity any boy would have, in recent months I've started digging into japanese anime and related stuff, and I came across something that would amaze and disturb my mind, the gender bender genre. At first it was just a sexual thing, got my hands on TG eroge and hentai with stories of boys turning by magic or science into girls and having sexual adventures in that setting, I got a little bit confused by liking it that much and wondered what that said about my sexuality, then, I found a manga, romance themed gender bender, with a boy becomming a girl, it said in the very cover it was a transgender story, and I read through it non-stop for 3 days, and on the last chapter when the boy decides he wants to be a girl permanently and declares her love for her male childhood friend that fell in love with her, I couldn't help but think 'this is so perfect, I want this to be my life'. It hit me that that one time fetish thing didn't seem that much like just a sexual thing anymore, I decided to talk to a friend about it indirectly, and looked back at my own life, I've always been shy, emotionally fragile, romantic, I've always had a desire to be cute, during all of my school years I always had a friend who I'd tag along with, and when that friend acted protective or kindly towards me, I'd wish that I was a girl so I could be treated like that all the time, so I could ask to be treated like that, so that maybe they'd always be kind and want to protect me, in my mind, I like the idea of being a girl and having a strong and gentle guy look after me, it feels like my behaviour would be more accepted, I wouldn't be expected to act manly, I would be able to indulge in girly habits without any shame. Honestly I don't think I'd miss being a male, if I could just now become, by magic or what not, a female, I'd probably would without much in the way of second thoughts. I don't think of myself as trans because the idea of anything but complete magic style transformation into a girl wouldn't suffice, I'd just think I'm pretending to be something I'm not (this is not to belittle trans people is just my personal perspective). I know these thoughts are messy and I feel like I didn't convey them in an orderly fashion, but what do you think? Are these the thoughts of a trans person? I never thought of myself as trans but idk what to think, it's just confuses. via /r/asktransgender http://ift.tt/2zDEszS