#nonbinary journey

I went out wearing a soft long sleeve shirt. It's a men's shirt but it looks kinda fem at the same time, that and wearing my long hair down and a little make-up to make my face look softer all made me feel pretty but still a little masculine in a good way.

I'm amab and only discovered I'm NonBinary very recently so I've never really felt pretty before and I think I like it.

So like I know it's a bad idea to sleep in a binder but like /how/ bad?

Nah I'm not gonna dont worry just. Oof. Don't wanna take this off.

It's kind of funny, I can tell when I'm getting gendered as male more often not because of pronouns usually, people tend to stumble over those or avoid them, but because of little tiny things.

How long people will wait for me to get off the elevator first. Whether people will hold the door for me. Whether people help me pick up my stuff. How close people walk next to me on the sidewalk.

It's fascinating - gender affects these things? Really? I never would have thought so, but apparently it does. It's subconscious.

Ahh. Yeah I wore a button down and the binder that works today, didn't speak to anyone most of the time and so got assumed male a lot I think. Idk I can never tell what people assume about my gender? I'm really curious, I'd like to know what I'm being perceived as. Really I want to know if anything I do makes people perceive me as male all day, because I want to control it. My goal, really, is to be able to control people's perceptions of my gender, because if I can do that, I can start fucking with it. Present so masc then start speaking (my voice is relatively low for an afab person but still always makes people hastily apologize and start "ma'am-ing" me). Wear a binder under a dress or smth. Just completely screw with their expectations.

The issue right now with doing that is no matter how hard I'm trying to fuck over the box people keep putting me in is that I always end up shoved into "masculine woman" or "lesbian". Which I'm not! I'm not any of that! So that's annoying. That's why I like binding, and I think a large part of why I'd like top surgery - to make it a bit easier to fuck up those binary boxes.

I'm really struggling to figure out why I bind. Because I just had this all written out nicely then remembered the first part, and where i am right now. I am alone in my room on my bed wearing pj pants and a binder with a bomber jacket over it. Why am I wearing the binder? It's hard to breathe. It's not comfortable, and starting to border on painful as I am approaching 12 hours of binding. But I wish I never had to take it off.

I am and always have been terrible at understanding and interpreting what I'm feeling. Right now, my biggest issue is whether I experience dysphoria. I am nonbinary either way, I know this. But the only way I know to discover myself is to compare my experiences to those of others, and mine has always seemed recent and more mild, until I look deeper.

My experience with discomfort with my gender, upon deep reflection, has always been there, simply lurking under another name. I came up with reasons for everything I did - because God forbid I do something just on a whim, on a feeling. But the reasons - for cutting my hair, for wearing cargo shorts, for dressing in all black, for using mens hair products, for dyeing my hair - were excuses. Acknowledging that I took those actions because of my gender makes more sense.

I feel like the reason I feel my dysphoria is quieter, more muted than what others feel is that every other emotion is, too. I don't experience intense emotions. Ever. I feel panic, sure, but it's more of a conscious acknowledgement that I am thinking too fast and need to escape. But sadness turns into emptiness more often than not, fear turns into apathy, anger I reflect into self-loathing which is more words than feeling, and yeah no i don't experience emotion intensely. Ever. So why would dysphoria be any different?

Yeah.

I'm going to talk about this with a therapist in January. My mom is getting me tested for ADHD, and while there I'm going to ask about whether its possible I have depression, anxiety, and gender dysphoria. Because those would explain everything I think.

Yeah I've been rambling, oh well. If you think what I experience does or does not sound like dysphoria, maybe let me know? Idk like I'm gonna end up listening to what the therapist tells me but other trans/nb peeps probably know better tbh so. Yeah.

"Gender isn't what you are, it's what you do."

I'm taking a class on women and gender studies, and it's really illuminating some things.

I spend so much time questioning whether I am one thing or another, whether I've tricked myself into believing certain things, whether I'm trans enough or even trans at all. But when it comes down to it, those are labels. What I label myself has no bearing on who I am - that is already happening. I am doing gender every day, and the answer to the question of what gender I /should/ be doing is very simple, really. Whatever gender I damn well please.

It's a bit late, but I think my New Year's resolution will be to live my life as freely as I can with the goal of my happiness. I will stop trying to conform to particular ideals unless I want to.

There is no winning when you spend every day walking a tightrope between what is socially acceptable and your own comfort, so I'm just gonna stop doing that, if I can.

I can't express how nervous that very thought makes me, but I will take it at my own pace. I need to work on solidifying the idea that there is no one way to be nonbinary in my mind, that I am nonbinary no matter how I behave or am perceived. I need to take a step back and make sure the choices I'm making are those I want to make, and not those I feel I should be making.

Farewell, and good luck if you're also doing this! I recommend periodic reevalutations of your motives for goals you hold anyways, I always learn something about myself when I ask these questions.

Ah, my friends, today was a happy day.

I got plants! Plenty of new friends!!! Succulents, mostly, and a bunch of free leaves people let me take. The man at the farmer's market was quite nice and let me have a leaf that was laying about and already had roots :D

My dad came home, he'd been travelling. I spent time with my family and had a good day.

And I ordered some boxers from tomboyx, which I'm excited for - they have a rainbow waistband and are very long, essentially shorts themselves, so that's fun. I don't know why but I always feel more comfortable when what I'm wearing as underwear could technically count as clothes. Like I wouldn't even get dress coded in my old high school for wearing a tank binder and these boxers. It amuses me and also makes me feel safe. Plus my affinity for layers gives me an advantage in strip CAH.

I've recently realized I like clothes shopping, so long as I'm buying the clothes I actually want to wear. Which I never used to do. So that's fun.

I also just read something Davis Hammett wrote in a Facebook post, just a passing sentence, but. "...I thought accepting my sexuality meant forfeiting my future."

That's where I am. That's the choice I'm making. Because if I accept my gender and decide to live openly, life is going to get harder. I'll have to deal with some extra bullshit. And right now, the discomfort and bullshit I face is familiar, but I'm not entirely sure what awaits.

I think, though, at this point it is no longer a question of whether I will come out so much as when. I'm trying not to rush into this, but I really, really want to.

I'm already dressing how I want, acting how I want. I'm not even pretending to be cis anymore. But the changes are gradual - a haircut here, a button down there - and people notice, sure, but my family just thinks it's because I'm queer, I think. My mom suspected but I told her I wasn't a trans guy and she didn't know there were other options.

It's only a matter of time before I gather the courage to change my name and ask people to use the right pronouns and stuff. This is real. This can happen, is happening.

Today one of my friends actually like called me nonbinary, like used that word to put me in my own gender category apart from male or female, in front of the rest of our friends and I'm. So happy. Like almost all of us are queer it was never going to be an issue but everyone just accepted it so easily? One even said "mood", she might also be nb. So yeah :)

Also I got a voice pitch analyzer? It's pretty good, and apparently my voice is just barely on the feminine side. Which is ok. But it's close to androgynous and I might be able to train it a bit lower? Which would be very awesome. Fair warning though if you're planning on using one it is...not a great feeling to see that your voice is perceived in a way that doesn't match you? So only use with that knowledge. Wasn't very bad for me bc I'm close to where I want to be but I've seen other people talk about it being super bad for dysphoria.

Yeah speaking of. I've always been a bit shaky over whether I'm really nonbinary/trans enough? Due to hangups about transitioning like /right now/ because I'm sort of terrified and all? But I'm over that, or at least starting to be. First of all because I'm out now, at least to some people, and even if I'm not entirely sure about my name and pronouns I'm probably going to start asking people to use them for me soon. But, more than starting to be ready for some element of transition, it has finally, finally sunk in that there is no requirement to be trans besides...being trans.

I am who I am. The words that best describe that person, in terms of gender, are nonbinary, agender, and trans. And so those are what I am. Words aren't perfect, and not all of these are a precise fit, but they all sound right. They fit me enough that their presence in my identity is an improvement over their absence, in terms of how much less confusing existence in this society is.

So yeah. I think I've got my gender pinned down, after around 4 years of confusion and being scared and lost and alone. That's a good feeling, that's a triumph. From here, I'm going to seek counseling for help figuring out how I want to transition. I'm going to keep doing my research, and planning things in advance. But now I have a foundation, and that's enough to build my future on.

I never imagined myself in my future - just what/who would be around me. But now an image is starting to form of a body that I could want to be in. Which is currently an alien concept.

I'm content with my progress and proud of myself for coming this far. I hope all of you reading this can feel that way about yourselves too - for me at least, it's less a change in where I am and more a change in how I think about how far I've come.

Merry Christmas! I hope it went ok for everyone if you celebrate it, if you don't sorry for being yet another person to go on about it today probably.

But! Some interesting stuff happened. Christmas is always interesting because you learn a lot about what people think of you. For me, that's communicated most readily by what people give me vs what they give my sister. My sister gets typical "girl" stuff - earrings, soap, bath bombs, a necklace. Nobody gave me any of that, and I think this is the first year where what people decided to give me was based entirely on my interests instead of gender stereotypes. Really idk why it just made me happy that my aunt gave all the women bath bombs but gave me a board game. I've always accepted the makeup and hair products and stuff pretty graciously I think, I try to be grateful and stuff but like. It made me really happy to just not be given that stuff this year. :)

Also I was playing rock band with my cousins and we made characters and I made a fairly androgynous one named Rowan. Like all the other characters I have. Made me happy.

And finally, my mom was talking to me after everyone left about getting jeans, and I started complaining about the comparatively shitty quality of "women's" clothes, and she was like "I want you to dress comfortably and according to your lifestyle" and like hell yeah! That's awesome. I still get nervous shopping in menswear but yeah I'm glad she's being supportive now. I don't know how much she suspects about how I feel about my gender, but it doesn't really matter so long as she isn't gonna think oddly of me for shopping where I please.

It's been like what, 2 months since I posted anything here? Wow.

It's because I've been at home. I don't get to do an awful lot of exploring my gender at home, because I'm scared.

I'm not quite sure why I'm scared, either. My mom has tried to make it clear that she will support me as best she can no matter what, and I genuinely believe that - but a part of me still thinks that she will say it's a phase, I'm faking it, I'm lying, this is how everyone feels, etc.

Because I'm still telling myself all those things. At this point I'm aware I'm trans. I am nonbinary. I have known this to some degree for almost 3 years. I have already started easing myself into socially transitioning a little bit (in a really messy unplanned way) and I've thought a lot about whether I intend to physically transition and I've decided that's something that is probably necessary (because I cannot wear a binder for 14 hours every day, I just can't, but sometimes I can't not).

And yet. I think a part of me will always doubt this. I can never really prove it to myself, and if I can't prove it to myself how will I justify it to other people? I won't be able to. Then how can I come out at all, if I'm not ready to defend my identity?

I don't want to correct people on pronouns. Confrontation, no matter how small, takes so much out of me. I wouldn't be able to take so much of it so regularly. So I introduce myself with "they/them or she/her", because if I'm going to just use they pronouns I feel like I have to fight for people to use them, constantly, or I'm somehow invalidating not just myself, but everyone else who uses them.

All of this loops back to this ridiculous core belief that it is possible to invalidate my or someone else's gender. It's not. Gender is gender, and sometimes I wish I could change it and have it be easy and just already feel like i fit in my clothes, in my body, in my voice - but I can't, and that's my life, and the sooner I accept that and move on the sooner I can start changing all those things to fit me instead of the other way around.