#tl;dr

I spent a lot of my life post puberty always feelings.... off. I never felt like I fully fit in with other women. I always did the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, was too boisterous, too rough, too much. I never felt fully confident in feminine clothing, no matter how much I pushed myself, how much of my skin I expose, how much glitter and sparkle and I plastered on my face. It never felt right.

When I was about 14, I tried using he/him pronouns for the first time. I only ever told one of my sisters, who has and always will be a proud and out lesbian. She supported me immediately, and this emboldened me to start wearing masculine clothes, "acting masculinely" (if there is such a thing lol), and participating in typically masculine activities. Things were alright for a while, until the fear set in. The deep fear of being judged, of never being taken seriously, of never getting to be a "real man", of being hurt by everyone that wanted to hurt me. And it scared me so much, I forced myself back into the closet.

I took this part of who I am, this part that felt genuine joy from being around other boys my age, being "one of the guys", experiencing manhood as an outsider, the euphoria I felt when I managed to get my large chest to look extra flat, and shoved it so far down inside of myself and refused to ever look at it again.

Then COVID happened. We were all locked inside with nothing to do but think and scroll on TikTok. It was the peak of the E-girl aesthetic. I saw the attention these girls got, the praise, the romantic attention, and I figured if I could do that, I would finally be happy. So I tried it. I wore dark clothes, dark hair, dark makeup. I dressed provocatively, showed my body off like some prize, sexualized myself in an attempt to make up for the fact that I still never felt right as a woman. And it destroyed me.

It wasn't until after moving in with my husband that I felt I was nonbinary. It was the only thing that made sense to me at the time. I didn't fully relate to women outside of the trauma most of us experienced just existing in life. Most of my favorite characters, actors, and creators were male. I was terrified that this meant I was secretly a misogynist. I felt like I was "betraying the sisterhood". I worried that it would only be a matter of time before I betrayed my fellow woman and sold out for the approval of men.

Well, turns out I'm actually not a horrible person with internalized misogyny! I'm actually a man! I've always been a man! I related to men so much because I'm a man who's been looking for healthy male connections my entire life! I'm a man who spent his whole life struggling to find the right words to describe who he is! I'm a man who once was a little girl who couldn't keep her hands off the kitchen scissors to cut her hair. In a way I think little me always knew who I was inside. I feel like she knew that there was something off about her body that didn't match how she felt inside, but didn't let that stop her from trying to have fun.

I don't want to forget the little girl I was. This isn't a death, it's a pupation. I'm finally turning into the man I always was and I can not WAIT to fully embrace myself!