gender. I've spent so long questioning and experimenting and close to coming out of the closet then going straight back in and trying to be a woman. it never felt "natural" to be a woman but there was a time that I was fine with it. As long as I didn't look at myself for too long in the mirror or on the other end of the spectrum.. spending so long in the mirror trying to perfect myself and conform to what I thought I should want. Or what I thought men would want. I tried to be whatever my partner at the time was attracted to.

A few years ago I started looking back to my childhood and seeing odd things. Wanting to dress like a boy, looking up to older boys, wanting to be the "dad" when playing house or just the boy character, having male role models and heroes and wanting to emulate them, roleplaying online as a male character, writing gay fan fiction, putting socks in my underwear to pretend I had a penis... just so much. I would take "do you have a male or female brain?" quizzes online and hope that I would get the "male brain" result...

And after I'd gone through a breakup I did some soul-searching and realized that they/them pronouns really worked for me and I enjoyed using them. And I got my hair cut short because I used my long hair as a shield for so long. And I was connecting the dots between all of this and my childhood and wondering if I still felt the way I did when I was a child and started trying he/him out on spaces online. And I started connecting my dissociation during sex with the fact that I don't like attention being paid to my femaleness.

When I would have sex I would try to imagine what my partner was feeling. I would try to pay attention to him and focus on pleasing him. I didn't like my chest being touched, or receiving oral sex. Looking down when receiving felt very offputting and wrong. The feeling was all wrong. I once asked my boyfriend at the time to "suck it like a cock" and that was the most pleasure I got from the act... pretending that I had a penis.

It got to the point that I would imagine myself as a man with another man while pleasuring myself. And now I don't know if I will have sex again... because I'm trying to be a woman.

day to day life isn't horrible. And I like feminine things. I like makeup, fashion, art, photography, interior decorating. I could be a good woman. I could be just fine. And with the way things are going in my country (USA) I might be better off just going on with my life as a woman. I've spent this past month trying to just accept that I'm a woman. Tell myself I'm a woman and that the trans thing was a phase and I was just bored with my life... but I can't help but think I would be gutted if I got to the end of my life as a woman without ever having let myself be a man.

I'm envious of trans men. I follow so many trans creators, especially trans guys... and I want what they have. Just the ability to flourish in themselves and show the world who they are. I feel like I'm hiding in a shell. I don't know why I was fine until a couple years ago... but the feelings are getting progressively worse. A sense of FOMO, especially. A sense that I need to do this before it's too late.