my favorite thing about “being LGBT” is the experience of feeling like i’m too “immature” to really speak my mind openly about some things but i think that has a lot to do with my environment and not something implicit.. like, i’m 18 years old for fuck’s sake, i’m an adult. LIKE.. i’ve never felt i’ve belonged to any group, especially anything LGBT, but it’s literally the only thing i really have next to the furry community.. i’m not even joking. but that’s for another time.

it also has A LOT.. to do with that whole thing that happened when i was younger. i know this (ie, being stuck in a certain mindset like that) happens a lot to people who experience physical/emotional abuse and etc and like.. i don’t wanna say what i went through was abuse. that makes light of everyone who’s experienced actual abuse. and i don’t want to do that. but i did go through something really bad and i think the experience of being constantly praised for being a “young smart kid” + the fact that i’m like.. physically exactly the same as i was when i was 12 years old has damaged my ability to accurately gauge what/who i am. i don’t think i can actually process me being the same as my fellow adult friends, ever. that’s just something i’m going to have to deal with.

specifically the issue is i don’t think i can accurately gauge What i am even. i’ve been thinking about it for years, don’t get me wrong. but no matter what i do, i don’t know what i’m going for.

first, i KNOW im agender. i am. that’s because i cannot physically think of myself with gender. i didn’t “understand gender” until i was like, 10 or 11 years old and by that point i already hated being a girl because it meant i was different from my brothers and i didn’t like that. that’s maybe stunted my ability to understand myself deeper than that. so i’ve just accepted that word because in my head i am not anything and that’s the closest i have. nextly, i know to be taken seriously i have to be SOMETHING.. i can’t go out trying my best to be “agender” because the nice old person at office depot helping me find a pack of staples doesn’t know what that is. i’m going to look like one thing, or another, or something else. i KNOW there’s a difference between what i am and what i look like. presently, i look visibly LGBT. it’s hard to explain to people that are LGBT that Don’t what this actually means i guess, at least in my experience. not to blanket everyone. i leave the house as comfortable as i can and someone driving past me on the road will yell “queer!” out their window and people will give me That Look. i know this! i know i am visibly LGBT. my problem is also that i can’t be comfortable in this state either. some people are comfortable being visibly LGBT. i’m not.

i’ve been maintaining online the idea that i am transmasc for years now because i feel better like that. a long time i went with fem pronouns bc, well, im afab. for a long time i didn’t know what transgender people were. sometimes when i was younger and in aggressive spaces i used masc pronouns anyway, because video games and comics in the mid 00s were masculine things. that’s how it was. and now i just Am A Boy to an amount of people around me and it’s a fact of life.

however, i don’t feel comfortable being transmasc. i don’t feel comfortable being agender, publicly, either. speaking of which, i don’t like “they”. i don’t like “he” or “she” either. i like “it” but i know using words like that can hurt the people around me that have been abused by being dehumanized with words like “it”. so i do not use “it”. do not call me “it”.

i go by “he” because it’s safe. that’s pretty much it. if i could live my life without gender, that would be great. i feel safe and comfortable, secluded from sexual spaces and bodies, secluded from human spaces and bodies, on my own, alone. i feel like that accurately describes my headspace in totality– “alone”. i’m not anything. i’m not a human being. i’m a monster, an alien, an inhuman thing granted humanity as punishment for whatever. i’m an “it”. but i know what i present is more important than what i am. so i “am” transmasc. i “am” visibly LGBT. i feel uncomfortable. life goes on.

being agender, even while being pansexual (because i am. i know that too), i feel outside the LGBT community because although i’m different, i’m not.. “different”. i’m just “without”. (that isn’t to say it’s comparable to being ace/aro at all, of course. that’s TOTALLY different.) but i can’t speak for/of/by the LGBT community because i don’t belong in it. i don’t belong to a community made for expression and communication when i am the human embodiment of being alone. that’s why i don’t belong there.

the infantalizing, dehumanizing language i use to describe myself is used to hurt others, and it doesn’t belong in a community made to help and support people. i don’t belong in LGBT because i don’t belong anywhere. even being an adult.. i’m not anything related to the lives you people live at all.

i wish i was a lesbian, or a gay man, or a trans person comfortable with being any gender at all, or Something compared to this Thing of noise. i wish i could be trans and be comfortable with being that, or being stealth, or being detrans’d, at all. but i’m not, because i’m not any of those things..

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