Free Internet Hugs

This blog is a safe space to ask about stuff and talk about things. I may not have the answers to all your questions but I’m a good listener, good at helping people figure things out, and if I don’t know how to help with something I can probably find someone who does.

I’m here for when you want to talk to someone supportive and kind, when you want a digital shoulder to cry on or somebody to fist pump because you did something cool and want to celebrate.

I’m here for my fellow queer kids, my fellow neurodivergent kids, my fellow lonely kids, my fellow weird kids, my fellow kids with complicated families, my fellow kids having a hard time.

I’m here to talk about that class that’s kicking your but, that friend you don’t know how to respond to, that cute boy you’ve got the biggest crush on but no one else knows you’re gay, that project you want to bounce ideas off of someone about, that little victory everyone else would think is silly but you’re actually really excited about, that life skill you just figured out is pretty important and you haven’t learned it yet and now you’re on your own at college and cannot for the life of you figure out how to cook anything other than ramen noodles.

So, I've been describing myself as a non-binary trans woman for a few months now, I've been on estrogen for 7 months now and I love the results.

The problem is that I fucking love masculinity on me, which I know isn't bad and it's not something that I hate having. I love femininity as well and I do all the feminine stuff as well as the masculine and androgynous stuff. I'm happy with all of it!

The problem: I am queer in my sexuality. I love being with men, women, enbies, whatever. I like being with women as a woman, I like the shared experience part, I like that when I'm with women, both of us know the shared aspects of our gender and it goes into romance and sex and all that. I like that.

I do not want to be a woman when I am with men. Even if he were to be comfortable being with a masculine woman (me), I would still be wildly uncomfortable with the fact that he would see me as a woman.

I was talking about it with my therapist the other day and we came to the conclusion that my gender is selective based on the people I am around. I experience gender through a weird fluidity.

I know that a lot of trans folks like how their partner(s) see them gender wise and feel validation through that and tho I do understand that when it comes to being with women, with men it feels sort of just... Inaccurate.

Like, I like men, I think men are cool, I like being around them (when they are safe), I find them sexy, hot, whatever. I like the sound of them, the feeling of them, I like that shit, but I think that with my transition, I have completely ignored or avoided the part where I am supposed to want male validation for my gender. I, frankly, do not give a shit about what men want from me and for some reason, in my brain, that has translated to now wanting to share my gender with them.

The only people I want validation for my gender from are myself, those I love (friends, family), and fem lovers.

And I've said this thousands of times already, but I do not have indifference towards how a lover who is a man would see my gender, I don't want to be gendered by him whatsoever.

I think a small part of me has an attachment to past achillean romances that I've had pre-transition. I liked, not necessarily being seen as a man, but I liked how it felt to be seen in non gendered masculinity because what I've noticed is that even when I am masculine, I am still not seen as a gender by most people. Visibly, I have never fit into gender, people have trouble trying to put me into it (which is a blessing and a curse. I did experience a lot of transmisogyny as a kid because of that) but when I was a "guy" and was with a guy, I was still barely, if ever, gendered by them besides pronouns. It was like an unspoken rule to never call me a boy, or a man, or to get me typically masculine things, or to talk about shared experiences that men have.

The first guy I was with was a "straight" guy and I was the only "guy" he was ever attracted to. When I asked him why that was, he said it was because I didn't carry myself with masculinity or femininity and he thought that was alluring.

The next guy I was with liked me more for my brain than looks. Something I don't understand because I have been told that I am a pretty person by a lot of people (not boasting, just confused as to why he validated my brain more than my body).

I've never been with a woman, but I know what I like and I know that what I would like is to be both loved by a woman and validated by them for my gender by loving me as a woman even if I am a bit of a masc woman. I also just think women are very hot and I want to lovingly touch them. A lot.

I am trying to figure out if this is normal or if I'm just being very autistic about love and gender.

It's very confusing. Hope you could keep track of what I was saying 💀💀

This, is beautiful.

Whatever you’ve got going on with your gender is amazing and I am low key envious. 😆

Legitimately though, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of emotional maturity and are very in tune with your sense of identity and how you feel, even if that doesn’t fit neetly into the world’s boxes or terms. If you were looking for a term to be able to find people with similar experiences, what you’re describing sounds somewhat akin to mirror gender, but you do you. You are rocking whatever is going on.

And yes, everything you said there makes sense. Ultimately, gender is a made up societal concept. At the end of the day, the important things are how we view ourselves and how we want to be treated. You want that sense of comraudery with women and that makes sense because it’s a beautiful thing. You don’t want to be treated like a woman by men, and that also makes a LOT of sense. The general societal framework for how men are expected to treat women sucks ass.

Hey there, that’s definitely a sucky situation to be in and I’m sorry they’ve put you in it.

I have an explanation of loneliness that might be helpful in understanding why they’re behaving this way.

In my experience, feeling lonely isn’t actually correlated to how many friends you have around. It’s based on your relationship with yourself.

If you don’t know how to love yourself, you reach out to other people to try to fill that void. The thing is, no amount of friends is ever going to fill that completely, because no matter how many people you’ve got around, you’re still stuck with yourself. Even if everyone around you loves you and thinks you’re awesome, if you hate yourself you’re going to feel hated. If you haven’t learned to treat yourself with love and compassion, no amount of kindness from others is going to leave you feeling whole.

This can manifest in strange ways sometimes, like desperately trying to be friends with someone and then losing interest once you are because you realised it didn’t fix what you’re feeling. It sounds simple and you’d think people would figure it out quickly and stop trying the same thing over again that doesn’t work, but it took me over a decade to figure out. It feels counterintuitive. If you feel desperate for companionship, you’re unlikely to realise that the solution is getting better at alone time.

All of that is to say, do your best to have some patience with your friend. It sounds like they have some things they need to work on. In the meantime, try to keep your expectations low. Don’t stake a whole lot of emotional energy on them upholding their end of the bargain. Don’t cancel/turn down other plans you’re going to feel sad about missing to make plans with them. If you know they’re going to dip out early, go in expecting it to be a brief hang out. Either be comfortable leaving early yourself or come prepared to have a good time even if your friend stops interracting (ie: take the opportunity to make friends with the other people at the club or bring along something you can enjoy doing anywhere like a book to read or a sketch pad) That way you’re less likely to feel like you’ve waisted your time and are now stuck someplace with nothing to do.

Both of you are responsible for your own actions. Abuse never justifies counter abuse. If she’s being abusive that’s not ok, no matter what you may have done.

This is a common tactic used by abusers. They try to convince you that the way they are hurting you is your fault and if you just behave they way they want you too everything will be fine. (ie: “I only lashed out at you because you provoked me”; “if you weren’t acting so suspicious I wouldn’t need to search through your phone”; “do what you’re told and you won’t get yelled at”) Please don’t fall for it. No one has a right to that kind of control over you and no matter how much you try to obey they will always find reasons to punish you.

Do you have any advice for like… socially interacting with people? Specifically: I struggle a lot with this weird thing where like, I’ll be talking with a person, and we’ll get through all the precursory “hey how are you?” “I’m good, how about you?” stuff. And if neither of us have something we’re excited about or a topic we can discuss for a good amount of time, it kind of just dies. I want to say something, but it feels like I can see the words in my mind through a cloud of fog and get the idea of them, but can’t figure out what exactly they are, and therefore can’t figure out how to say them. And while I’m trying to figure that out, the other person is waiting in awkward silence, which eventually ends in them going to find someone else to talk to before I can find the words. To compensate for this, I’ve tried just starting up a random completely un-related subject to try and spark a discussion, but that just ended in more awkwardness and either got no response at all, or a very weirded out and half-hearted one. So… how far into “random” territory can a conversation starter get before it feels uncomfortable and out-of-the-blue when it’s dead silence and there isn’t already a subject at hand? How do people start and carry on conversations in general?

Sometimes it feels perfectly easy, and I’m completely in my element, and other times I’m a completely different person. Also I’m really not sure if doing this is even good for me, because I’ve heard over and over to always be true to yourself and never change yourself to make others happy, but like… if I don’t do that, if I don’t pretend to be confident and funny (I usually fail at those anyway but that’s the best option) then I become invisible and people start ignoring me. I can never tell if people are purposely trying to ignore me, if my voice isn’t as loud as I think it is and they just didn’t hear it, or if silence is just their way of replying and I’m reading too much into it.

I don’t know, it feels like everyone has secretly been going to an extra class on how to be a person and I never heard about it, so I have to catch up and figure it out by guessing. Things like wondering if I’m stupid because I don’t know the names of people I’ve never met but they know me, or trying to figure out what is socially acceptable or not, never being able to get references to things I’ve never seen because apparently EVERYONE has seen them. Do I really have to be on TikTok and insta and YouTube or whatever all the time to be able to get human connection? Am I the problem or is it just that everyone’s used to being on the internet? But like, everyone will seem super awkward and uncomfortable around me, but then I’ll see them talking with literally anyone else and they’ll be perfectly at home, so I’m guessing it’s the first option.

And that’s the big question: trying to figure out what the frick is wrong with me ✨✨✨✨✨✨ is my voice too nasally? Because I can’t trust my own perception of myself anymore. Are my interests too niche? Am I just inexperienced? Do I look weird? Do I smile too much or too little? Am I just out of practice? Am I perfectly normal and just over analyzing everying? I genuinely can’t tell and I can’t Ask people because that’s 1. Socially unacceptable (I’m pretty sure) and 2. I can’t trust their answer anyway because I can’t tell if they’re lying to me or not. When I try to guess how people feel about me, I go based off of how I think I’d perceive myself if I met myself, and none of it would be good. And like, I tell white lies all the time every day to spare people’s feelings, so therefore I can never be sure if they’re doing the same or not. But no one is the same and everyone likes different things, but there are occasionally some things lots of us agree on, and…. Agh, I don’t know.

I feel like I’m also just very bd at thinking before I say stuff, because I have to say SOMETHING before I keep them waiting too long, but honestly sometimes it’s just worse than if I’d stayed silent. And I don’t know how to both think about what I’m going to say first, AND say something funny or positive or engaging. Also, applying theater class to real life (my teacher would be proud) I’ve been told that I tend to overact and make my characters seem fake, and after watching a video I took with my friend, I have concluded I also do that in real life too. My movements are way too exaggerated and big, but I’ve also been told that if they AREN’T big then no one will see them on stage from far away, so like… does THAT apply to real life? And how do I find the middle ground between too big movements and too small?

Actually I think my general problem is that I just can’t find an in between for anything. Everything’s on either one end of the scale or the other. I’m either super shy or super loud, and I ping pong between the two with no rhyme or reason. I’m either kinda, or the worst person in the world. I’m either well liked, or well hated. I’m either smart, or so stupidly dumb it’s almost comedic. And I can never find the middle ground.

(Also yes, I have very much considered autism. I can neither confirm nor deny the allegations)

So yeah, hopefully at least some of that made sense, and absolutely no pressure to respond 🙂 I’m just trying to get someone else’s opinion because my perception of the world is very warped and I don’t know how to fix that.

Hope you have a great day!

Hey there buddy, it’s gonna be alright.

You’re not stupid for not getting all the references. Nobody gets ALL the references. You just didn’t happen to see that particular meme and that’s fine. As someone who wasn’t on the internet until college, I feel ya big time. This one gets easier though. As you get older and start interracting with a broader set of people from different backgrounds, not everybody’s gonna know the same jokes and there will be a lot less pressure to. Once you’re no longer in school, absolutely nobody cares. Just wait this one out and don’t beet yourself up about it.

As far as the whole ‘acting confident vs being yourself’ type deal goes: confidence is a skill that everybody could use some practice in. I’ll admit, the separation between ‘the true self’ and ‘the mask’ can be pretty complicated, especially for autistic people, but as long as you’re not lying I think you’re on the healthier side of the line.

For example: I’m more of an introvert, but I like having friends, so I’ve gotta push myself a little to interact with people even though it doesn’t come completely naturally. Things like good conversation, small talk, and making friends are social skills that need practice. And for some people like me, that practice has to be a bit more intentional because I’m not naturally good at those things. On the other hand, going as far as lying about what you like and don’t like because you want to fit in with people will wear you out and end up making you feel more isolated in the long run. Been there, done that.

Good rule of thumb: be the person you want to be and enjoy being, even if being that person takes a bit of conscious thought and effort.

As far as conversation starters/continuers go, back in middle school I started coming up with a question of the day to be able to ask people I wanted to talk to. Mine were always kinda zany like “if you could have a super power, what would it be?” “If you could create a planet, what would it be like?” or “If you were to be stranded on a deserted island with a fictional character, who would you want to be stranded with?” I’d always preface it with “Random question of the day is…” and that seemed to mitigate a bit of that confused whiplash reaction from changing the subject. The important thing about the questions is that they were open ended and allowed a lot of room for follow up questions (“ooooo, that would be a really cool power! Why’d you pick that one?”)

In general, people like talking about themselves, so as long as you’re asking questions they’ll keep the conversation going.