my personal experience with gender identity.

i haven't identified as "cis" for a majority of my life. even when i was a child, i never properly identified with girls or girly things. i would pitch a fit when my mom wouldn't let me get my hair cut short, cry when i had to wear a dress, and more often than not found myself in the company of boys rather than girls. when i was hanging out with my girl friends, i was always the "masculine" member of the group and assumed that role in any roleplaying game or story. this was fine to me- i always connected more to male characters. when i was 7 years old, i wanted nothing more than to be just like gaara from naruto (LMAO).

i never really understood why then, but for the most part, i just felt like i could never "fit in" with girls. the me of today would go back to tell my younger self that it isn't just "girls" i don't fit in with, its everybody- but thats a different topic for a different time.

when i was about 11 or 12 years old, i discovered what being transgender meant, and how you could change your outward appearance to match how you felt and adopt different pronouns and even a different name altogether- and it resonated with me so deeply i cried writing in my journel that night. i still have that original diary to this day- july 11th, 2012! can you believe that?

i'd go on to identify as a transman for the next six years, chopping off all my hair (to the dismay of my mom) and wearing a binder everyday and refusing to ever touch anything "girly" ever again. i felt happy at first, i felt like i finally was who i was on the inside, but something about considering myself as just that label felt wrong. just like being labelled a "girl" felt wrong, after a while, being a "boy" felt wrong, too.

now, i've never been formally diagnosed with autism, and i doubt i ever will, considering my finances and the general state of america, but in talking to friends who are diagnosed and seeing/hearing the experiences of autistic people online, i think it's safe to assume i'm probably autistic. i think the problem i've had throughout my life is that i found myself uncomfortable in one label, so i automatically assumed the other label had to be the right or "better" choice for me. because obviously, if there were only two options, the one i had no experience with had to be the one better than what i had suffered with- right?

in reality, neither label fit who i was, who i still am. i'm neither a woman nor a man, i'm just... me. agender is the term i like to give myself when people press for something to label me as, but in all honesty, i don't see myself in terms of gender anymore. i look in the mirror and just see a person. it's a liberating kind of feeling, when i've spent many years crying over my appearance and saying i'd do anything to change it. i'm at piece with the way i look now, and even more so at piece with the gender identity i have now- or the lackthereof.

funnily enough, after all those years of taking anyone's misgendering extremely personally and hating myself for accidentally thinking of myself as a girl in my head, i'm more comfortable being refered to as a "girl" than i am a "boy". it's... weird, and i haven't been able to convey my feelings on this properly, but when i call myself a girl, i don't, like, mean it in a gendered way? i don't know. i think maybe i'm making up for spending all of my teen years blocking myself from enjoying anything "girly". i love wearing makeup and i don't mind wearing very feminine clothing these days, and i think its because i finally know who i am and don't feel trapped by the items i adorn my fleshy body with.

... did any of that make sense? LMAO. i apologise for this random ramble. it's just something that has been sitting on my mind the past week as i've been clicking around other people's sites and seeing so many transpeople.

thank you for reading
keep yourself self ♡