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15 March - trying to work out why I feel this way

Maybe this crisis had been coming for a while but the trigger that tipped me over the edge was visiting a university campus open day with the teenager. We had been to a couple some time last year and it had the same effect on me then. 
Why is this? 
Why does going to a campus cause me to collapse into a depression that it takes me weeks to recover from and which also seems to kill off any hope around my gender?
I think the gender part is the easiest to explain. Being around young women confronts me with what I’m not. It is not something that I have ever really been consciously aware of, but the picture of me (Nicola) in my mind is about twenty. And that is long gone. So I see a young woman looking how I imagine I want to be and I think that could be me and then (particularly when this really hit me last year as I saw a reflection of myself at the same time) I am hit with the realisation that this is not the case at all. It is more than just feelings of leaving it too late or simply adjusting my expectations to be a middle-aged rather than young woman. It is showing me that my entire idea of transitioning and who I want to be is a fantasy that can never exist in reality and that shatters everything. 
There is more than just the gender question though, these visits are really getting me down for other reasons and I still need to figure out why that is. 

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