Boxes, the bane of my existence. I've always wanted one, but none that I'd ever heard of ever really fit. I desperately want a box to live in, but I simply cannot find mine.
Please forgive me for starting another thread, but I didn't feel comfortable stepping on someone else's thread for this.
I used to live outwardly-comfortably as a hetero male. I actually did enjoy some of the privileges it provided me. I've lived as a gay and straight woman. Neither sexuality has mattered to me, but my own identity never fit what other trans women have described...they haven't identified as trans women, they've identified as women. That never did seem to fit me. As well, other trans women I've talked to have always said they are always cis women in their sleeping dreams. I'm almost always presenting female, but I always have this embarrassing "thing" that I need to hide, which, speaking of, almost always finds its way into my dreams in a mortifying way.
It might be my own perfectionism infiltrating my own identity, but I've always felt that I've been impersonating women or men, however I'm presenting. I feel like I'm invading others' space, others' reality. I'm comfortable hanging out with groups of men or women, other than when it comes to personal matters (men talking about their virility or women talking about reproductive issues or societal inequities and experiences).
Given that I lived with one gender role for nearly 30 years, I have what are considered masculine interests, almost exclusively. I love fast cars and machinery and computer graphics and I even consider myself somewhat of a mechanical inventor. When I'm presenting female, I almost always wear jeans and t-shirts and almost never wear makeup. In fact, wearing makeup makes me even more self-conscious and "fake".
I never had dreams of transitioning. I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would wake up one day with a female body. Even though I believe this is a tabu subject, I even had certain aspirations when I'd heard Dr. White was working on human brain transplants. Sorry.
I just feel that no matter what I do, no matter how I present, I'm always wearing a mask and not being my true self.
I don't know if I'm actually NB, but as I said before, I do enjoy some of the privileges that presenting male has, even if I'm a short-ish weakling of a man. It feels confining at the same time.
I have strong body dysmorphia. When it comes to intimacy, I want my own body to be completely ignored, which is entirely unfair to my partner, whomever that may be. GCS, if I can ever afford it, is in my future.
It's my identity and my presentation that bothers me the most, though. Sexuality, I'm comfortable with whatever I am. Identity is my issue.
I'm not a woman with a penis. I do NOT identify as a man whatsoever., but I don't identify as a woman, either. Honestly, I identify as a freak, but I understand how most people don't like that term.
I love being misgendered when I'm presenting as male. In other words, I feel awesome when someone ma'ams me, says she or her. I feel like I'm invading cis women's space when I outwardly present as female.
Am I NB? Am I gender fluid? Something else, emphasis on thing?
I guess I'd better enter a caveat here...I mean no offense whatsoever to anyone. I most likely have terminology wrong and I may be demonstrating concepts that could piss some people off. I just wish I knew, for sure, what box I could claim as my own as each time I climb into one I look across the room and see another that I would love to occupy.