[Hiraeth]

I'm in the camp that firmly believes there is value to the "find an excuse to move far away, do everything, and then come back with a statement of what has already irreversibly occurred". That's what I did, it's what several others I've come across over the years (but mostly of similar cultural background) have done, and we've found it to be the least evil physically and emotionally.

Of course it's not for everyone. I don't, unfortunately, have any advice for the more common situation which is what you seem to be in now. There was absolutely no chance that following that path down would have worked for me - I would be dead by now. So I put forth every last ounce of my energy into finding a way to remove myself from the everyday periphery of people who knew and thought they had power over me. I didn't try to stay and work it out because I knew it was hopeless and I had wasted so much of my life already.

I've known people who decided not to transition, people who have detransitioned, as well as people who suppressed it as long as they could with whatever destructive habit they could until they broke down physically and emotionally and even after surviving that ordeal, will be haunted by the consequences of that decision for the rest of their life. Some people transition to increase their quality of life, others do it so they can have a life at all. Every person and their situation is different. One way to find out where you fit in all of that... might be to give different options a serious try.

For example: for the first two years after coming to terms with the fact that this was an acceptable explanation for most of the extreme mental instability I've had throughout my life, I was still scared to actually transition, so I decided that I would not do it and hope that just "accepting myself" intellectually would be sufficient. I gave that a serious try and failed miserably. Having done so, even when transition itself went through rough patches (and boy there were so many), I never regretted it or considered stopping because I knew from experience the alternative was untenable.

Often times, transition (or even just coming out as trans, or allowing yourself to express yourself a bit differently through dress) can bring on a whole new set of problems that very much makes it seem like life is "getting worse". For many years I was convinced that I was simply trading one set of problems for another. But the fundamental difference is that I now have a basic level of self-respect and self-integrity, whereas I did not before. That goes a long, long way in the bigger picture.