#non binary experience

ive realised recently that I won't correct people when they use the wrong pronouns for me, and I tell people about my pronouns identity less (for context I'm non-binary and use they/them pronouns). And when I think about it, I think I know why.

When I first came out I was great about correcting people about my pronouns, but now? I stay silent. I want to correct people, most people would try their best to use the right pronouns. But I'm scared.

While being open about my pronouns to everyone ment that I was able to feel more confident in my identity, it also ment that so so many people knew about them. Some of those people that I didn't even know.

And that is why it slowly tore down my confidence when it came to correcting people and my identity.

People I didn't know would come up to me and refer to me as "a they/them" or walk past and say "it's the they/them". It was objectifying and dehumanizing, like I wasn't a human being in their eyes. I hated it.

The breaking point was a few years ago now when a kid I had never seen before came up to me and ranted about how God only created two genders and how I shouldn't feel this way and that I should cease to exist. Now I'm not religious, but that hurt.

I only really tell my friends/people I trust my pronouns now or if someone directly asks. I am slowly getting better at correcting people again, but this never should have happened in the first place.

We should all be able to feel comfortable disclosing pronouns with everyone, because identity is important.

I don't really know how to end this other than to say that I wish I always could've been able to correct others because of how much I dislike it when someone uses the wrong pronouns. I am a human being and I'd like to be treated as such.

my partner had left for a week for a trip and i had the house to myself. and i was just in a slump. i didn't feel like doing anything. i didn't feel like eating or drinking. i couldn't play games and escape like i normally would. i couldn't watch anything. all i could do was listen to music and scroll and hope i could numb whatever it was i was feeling.

i wanted to stop being. i knew it wasn't right to feel that way. that something was wrong and i couldn't figure out what it was. i wanted to die. not the first time in my life, but this time felt different. i was watching a lot of trans content creators and "am i trans or not?" videos and many of them said similar things, that if you clicked on this video and are watching all the way till the end, then you might be, and it's worth considering.

it was like the last piece of a puzzle i had been failing to solve my whole life, finally clicking into place. except the truth was so powerful that it was hard to accept, and i tried so hard to block it out. i resisted it for so long. i didn't know much about non-binary identities and had the wrong idea and assumed it meant something closer to genderless / agender. i think if i had known more about non-binary as an identity, i would have maybe hatched sooner, but i'm not sure.

i knew something was wrong with me that a local therapist couldn't fix. there wasn't a doctor i could go to. no one was going to tell me what was wrong with me. they had tried everything when i was a teenager. i had been on so many different medications for every ailment under the sun and none of them really helped, except anti-anxiety medication made panic attacks more bearable. i felt like a dry well and like my brain was missing a chemical i couldn't make or didn't have enough of. i thought for so long it was dopamine and chased it, and then serotonin, but i knew that antidepressants didn't help me. i felt like a dry plant missing water, estrogen in my case.

hatching was so hard. it was just me lying in bed and crying for three days and listening to Sophie - It's Ok To Cry and BIPP on repeat. i cried until there was nothing left, then cried some more. it was like all the toxic and wrong parts of my brain were leaving my body through my tears. it hurt, but i was healing. i felt all the pain and hurting in the world. i felt all the pain from my childhood.

i saw myself as a scared and nerdy little girl back in the 90s and sitting in the video game section of electronics in walmart and looking at the cover of EverQuest, and wanting to be the girl on the cover. i saw myself being raised as a girl and everything that could have been. i felt my dad raising me differently, and not being as hard on me or as physically violent and abusive, and why it hurt me so bad emotionally when he'd yell at me. i saw a different world, where i was raised differently and he got the daughter he wanted. i had an explanation for why i felt so distant from my mom, in a way that she didn't understand.

i saw myself being normal, and playing with the other girls, and turning out like them. i saw all my early friendships with girls and they all made so much sense now. and why i had so many and got along with them so well. i remember one of my friends telling my parents i was so fun to play with when we went to the waterpark, and not like the other boys that she didn't like playing with. sure i liked hanging out with guys, but girls were just so much easier to be around for me. i could just be myself around them.

but my past wasn't an absence of boyhood, it was an absence of girlhood that was also a part of me. i felt femininity on a spiritual level and connected with it. i had previously explained myself by using taoist symbolism of yin and yang to say "i'm kind of like both in the same body" if people ever asked. or "i'm trying to balance masculine and feminine energies" or something like that before understanding i was genderfluid / bigender. i was sad for the girl i never got to be. for the one that had to go away and be put in the closet and could never come out. i wasn't sad that i had been raised as a boy, i was sad for the other part of my soul that never got to exist.

hatching was so painful and so hard, but so necessary for me to grow and heal. it's so strange being on the other side of it. like i'd lived my whole life inside my shell, and it's odd not struggling so much mentally. there's less noise. i get better sleep. i'm less tired all the time. i'm not as depressed and anxious. being on estrogen is literally the only thing that's worked so well for me. it's helped with so much, and my dysphoria is basically almost completely gone. i have days were i question if i'm non-binary or not, but that's about as much as i really struggle with my identity like that these days. and it's a healthy amount of questioning that i feel is expected. sounds cliche, but things really do get better sometimes.

So I wouldn't say I'm trans, but I understand others can identify themselves that way. I just don't and don't really feel I'm seeking transition either.

I suppose another way to call it is "isogender". But nonbinary is the preferred label. :3

This is a shared experience!

Thank you so much, truly.

It is a very bittersweet feeling. It hurts knowing others have felt that hurt, because I wish no one had to. At the same time, I know pain shared is lessened. I began sharing my experience not expecting anyone to understand, and the amount of people who've thanked me for putting their feelings into words, for helping them understand how they felt, is truly staggering to me. I fully believed I was alone and possibly making up everything I felt, and even though it sucks that there's suffering in the world, we can find community and belonging.

Cause Im not alone. And neither are you. There are people who understand and know how it feels, and people who will do their best to understand even when it doesnt seem intuitive. You and your experiences arent alienated from the world, I know when you're non binary, both in the everyday world and online one, it can feel so lonely and invisible. Especially now, with all the trans discourse. I know I felt like that, but you're not invisible. There's a miriad of people who share your experiences, a miriad of people who've reached happier times, a miriad of people you can rely on to get how you feel without having to jump through the hoops of introducing entirely new concepts to those who are completely unfamiliar with those.

I keep pronoun pins on my jacket but people I talk to use the wrong ones anyways because I "look like a girl", some of my friends use a certain set of pronouns since it's easier rather than using the ones they really want to

People assume that its fine to assume

People state they always know what someone is born as

I live with a layer of fear on me because if one person is casually transphobic then more are more likely to be

I've had people say I "look too normal" or "no your not" since I don't fit into their idea of trans people or the non-binary non gendered ideal.