TW: discussion of genitalia
Hi! I'm Avery and I'm a 19 year old trans girl who is pre-transition and still sort of questioning. I'm currently in the closet to my parents, but I told my sister that I think I'm a girl. My gender and coming to terms with it over the past year has been really confusing and hard at times. I suppose I should start earlier though. I remember when I was 8 or 9 that I wanted to cut off my penis. It wasn't a feeling I had every day, but I remember that feeling coming back when my parents first started letting me stay home alone. I think I was 11 or so. I remember standing in our living room with my pants down and a pair of scissors in my hand. I don't remember doing anything more than that, but I've had uncomfortable feelings about what constitutes my body for a long time. I've always been my dad's son, which is hard as hell. He's always called me "little dude" (my brother is just "dude"). It made me feel like I was the OTHER son as a kid, not his son, but an afterthought. I hated being called that and it happened almost all the time he greeted me.
5th grade is the first time I remember thinking I felt like a girl and being able to identify that feeling, but that I didn't want to be one. I'm not sure if anyone else experienced this, but around that time was when my mom started letting me pick out my own clothing. I wanted this pair of black vans with teal laces and highlights, which she bought for me. I don't exactly remember how I felt wearing them, but I was young so I don't think I was nervous about it. But the first day I wore them to school, I was teased by this bully named Kyle. He said something like "[My birthname] those are girls shoes, what are you, gay or a girl?" And it cut deep because I had felt like a girl and he *knew* even though he didn't. I think I ignored him and my teacher at the time told him to stop. I wanted to dress in more feminine colors and clothing, but after what Kyle said to me, I didn't. 6th grade was uneventful as far as I remember.
Then I got into middle school. I was a nerdy boy. I didn't really play sports and I was mostly into star wars, board games, and other things like that. I had a few friends that were boys who I could hang out with and feel comfortable having "bro" time with, but I remember enjoying spending time and talking to my friends who were girls more. That's when I first figured out I was queer, although at the time I thought I was just a gay kid because I had a crush on this tall soccer player named Henry (name changed). I told my friend Ashley about how I was feeling after she asked me if I was gay, I guess something tipped her off. She told a lot of other people and Henry got angry. I didn't know he was a conservative Catholic. I'd get called a ->-bleeped-<-, gay, queer, dick sucker, all of the homophobic things you can think of behind my back and sometimes to my face. That bullying mostly stopped in high school and when it did happen, I didn't care. I had two close, for middle school, girlfriends (not dating) named Erica and Katie. I was out as gay at that point and we used to make plans to go to the movies and they'd let me borrow their clothes so I could be their girlfriend. We even picked out a name, Isabelle, which shares the first letter of my birth name. I never did it though because I was way too nervous. I remember feeling excited to do that though. I liked imagining being a girl, but I didn't want to do it for just a few hours to go out with my friends. They were both a year ahead of me though, so when they went to high school, I ended up spending more time with my "bro" friends.
High school was really hard for me. My freshman year went well. I did pretty well academically, partied a little bit, made a lot of friends, and I started dating a girl named Hannah during the summer. Looking back on it, even though I'm still young, it was a nice relationship for the time it lasted. We had fun and it was low stress, but I felt like I was out of place in it. I had started telling people I was bi, which she was fine with, but I felt weird in my social role in the relationship. That could be me just projecting how I'm feeling now onto a memory though. Anyway, I really started slipping during my sophomore year I had a lot of issues with anxiety and depression due to external issues. Hannah and I broke up sometime in November and I started to isolate myself and take anxiety meds. I only really hungout with a few of my bro friends still, instead of Hannah and her friends, which was a lot nicer. We had some overlapping friends who I still love and enjoyed spending time with, but her friends that were girls were a lot easier to be around. I felt on the outskirts of my other circle of friends. I only really had one close friend, Guppy. He and I hung out a couple times a month for almost the entire weekend. He came with my family to the beach for an entire week. I had a bit of a crush on him, which he knew and we used to joke about. I didn't want to be his boyfriend though. When I imagined us together, that would feel too much like our friendship. I wanted something else, but I didn't relaly know what it was.
Then things got really really hard during the summer before my junior year. I don't really want to go into the specifics of what happened, or how, but someone in my extended circle of friends did something really awful to me. It ruined the rest of my summer and I started dealing with severe migraines constantly. I ended up leaving the public school for a few months and transferring to a private school, where I finished while I got my health in order. I didn't get into the colleges I wanted to, but my safety school offered me a substantial amount of money. I've been successful there.
During that time, I didn't really think about my gender a whole lot because I had so much more going on that kept me down constantly. The summer before college was when I started to explore my gender again. I started to tell people I was agender and I decided to change my name. My therapist and I had multiple sessions talking about how I was feeling and we talked with my parents at one point too. They use my name (Avery) sometimes, but most of the time they use my birth name and treat me like their son. For the past few weeks, I've been questioning my gender identity as agender. Everyone treats me as a man anyway, I don't know what it would even mean to be treated as "agender", and even if I did, that isn't what I want. I feel really girly and feminine. What finally convinced me was a day trip with my family. We saw my brother who I haven't seen in over a year. My borther and I share similar names and look alike (despite a few year age difference). I was introduced to his new girlfriend with my birth name. My heart sunk every time someone confused us.
but what really sticks with me was when my dad and I were trying to find the cottage where we met my brother. I was trying to find his contact info on my dad's phone and I found my contact information, which still has my old name and an old picture of me. It's a picture of me sleeping, which is 1. sorta weird and 2. not one he took with that phone. my heart broke when I saw that. I felt like, and still feel like, my parents will never recognize me as who I am. but they don't know yet. I want to talk to my therapist first, then tell them with my sister. I want to be fairly confident first. I don't feel like I was when It old people I was agender, so I don't want to screw it up again. I'm glad I waited a few weeks to tell anyone. Instead of talking about it, I read blogs and watched videos from trans women for guidence through what I'm feeling, which I think was beneficial. Instead of looking for approval through my friends, I feel like I did self exploration, which is helping me love myself and what I think my gender is. It took me a while to vocalize how I've been feeling to my sister, but it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders when I did it. She was really accepting and isn't going to tell my parents anything until I talk to my therapist.
Anyway, this post is getting long so I'm going to end it here. I look forward to interacting with everyone around here
