So I guess what’s expected here is a full explanation starting with my birth where I felt bad about not getting the pink hat as a baby or something. Unfortunately, I cannot provide this: regardless of which subjective lens I use to look back on my childhood, I can’t just point to that and be like “see? i was a girl all along. you morons, you absolute cretins”.
Here’s why:
(For the record, I did try to express myself in a feminine way a couple times growing up, but each time I had to deal with cisnormativity in my household. It wasn’t overt or even implicit homophobia/transphobia, I just felt like I had to explain things that I didn’t know how to explain. I bring this up not to “validate” myself but because cisnormativity is really stupid and I hope by bringing it up more we can help others disentangle themselves from it more easily.)
How do I know, then? All this started about 3-4 months ago after I started making changes in my lifestyle with self-care. From there, the period of questioning, aka suffering and hell, began. 1 thing about being trans is you don’t go from 0% certain to 100% overnight, you gotta get through 30%, and 50%, and 80% over weeks. How do you think it feels to feel 50% trans?????? Absolutely ridiculous, but I got through it. I used any pronouns on Discord and felt a little spark in my heart every time someone (mostly zovrah lol) would use she/her. I shaved my legs. My cousins came over and OFFERED to put makeup on me/put my hair into a ponytail/put nail polish on me (I genuinely just lucked into that). On the other hand I had to wear a fancy shirt to my brother’s high school graduation and I hated that.
Most important, though, was what happened on the inside. I would be like “ok, I’ll go for a run, as a girl” (despite my visual appearance not changing) and see how my brain felt. Soon I was doing that all the time, because it just felt nicer and I started really being able to see myself as female.
So really that’s all it is. A collection of evidence gathered through experiences (p less than 0.05 or whatever) and Hey Liberals If Being A Cis Man Is So Privileging Why Is Being A Woman So Much More Fun. "being cis" was like playing stall irl. BORING as hell. gender APATHY
Something important to note is that even now, there are always doubts and gender euphoria isn’t constant. I was a bit annoyed when I learned that presenting as female wouldn’t leave me in a permanent state of happiness, but it is what it is I guess. I wake up as a girl and my first thoughts are about eating breakfast and making plans for the day instead of seeing how I can make myself look pretty. Gender apathy is still around, but the good times are also there when I need them.
Sometimes, I get the opportunity to make magic happen. A couple weeks ago, my family went on a vacation to a place with a pretty big beach (though it was too cold to swim there). I’m a big fan of settings like beaches, gardens, and yes, cityscapes, because they’re neutral and non-judgmental. They have character, but you can also just spend time with them. So on the last day before we left, I went there alone for an hour or so and just walked and thought about gender. It was neat.
Then I went back a few hours later.
The mist was heavy, and the light was gradually running out. There was no one else. This is what it looked like in all directions (except the water):
I could say whatever I wanted. So I did. I talked about the future I wanted, a life full of friends, work, hobbies, style, and even romantic relationships. The beach, and the ocean next to it, listened.
To call it a profound experience would be an understatement. The profound experience part was me not being able to find my way back and stumbling into a stranger’s house to ask for a drink, terrified I would collapse from exhaustion, and walking 5 miles back to arrive home at 11 PM. This was something more.
This is how I know I’m on the right path.
