This is gonna be a long one, so strap in people, I write novels as posts.
So,
My current "let me torture myself with uncertainty and obsess over something to a ridiculous degree" thing started only very recently and I think started when I looked in the mirror, decided I was sick to death of that face staring back at me (i've been dealing with body dysphoria since the birth of my youngest child you see) and said "I want to like the person I see looking back at me."
My first step in that, I decided, was to get around to getting my hair cut. I had long hair my whole life till last year when I finally worked up the courage to get it cut from waist length to shoulder length. For a time this delighted me, it was so much easier to take care of, but as it got longer it started to tangle and my self image began to deteriorate more and more with every extra inch of hair.
I knew I wanted it short. Honestly, I wanted it REALLY short. I had, for a long time, been flirting with the idea of androgyny but fear over regretting it, fear of it looking terrible stopped me. In the end I decided chin length would be short enough, it would be moderately gender neutral without being a severe "butch" cut that I might regret and my family might really freak out over (crazy really, i'm 33 years old, yet I still care what my family say and think. Eugh.)
I finally made the appointment on a whim, with my dear husband's coaxing (he was sick of me moaning about how much I hated having long hair again and he was right, my dislike for how it looked and how difficult it was to brush meant I honestly really wasn't taking care of it and was letting it end up a matted mess rather than actually deal with it)
half an hour later I had chin length hair and it's like a switch was flicked.
I looked at myself in a mirror and while i still didn't entirely recognise the face that stared back at me (ahh dysphoria's a crazy thing huh?) I liked that face better. Shorter hair made my face look wider, less gaunt but also drew attention to my naturally somewhat squared jawline which i've always kinda liked. (is it weird to like your jawline? eh)
That evening I started obsessing over ways to make my hairstyle less girly and more genderless or masculine and I felt a surge of.. something.
All those times i'd wistfully sighed "damn I wish I could just wave a wand and be a boy" came flooding into me and reached a peak I could no longer ignore.
It wasn't just a throw away joke to hide my discomfort any more, it wasn't just frustration related to my biology making me sick (hormone disorders suck) but as I looked at the face in the mirror I thought "okay, this is a good start, now how do I make this better?"
Something inside me piped up "Do you think maybe you'd actually be happier as a boy? like genuinely and for real? You know it's possible right? You CAN do that."
But something holds me back. Doubt. Shame? No, shame isn't the right word, more a fear of being seen as foolish or "jumping on a trend" (I do hate a trend)
I fear being told i'm attention seeking or trying to be "special"
I also fear it's all a hell of a lot of effort and might not actually be the answer, but still, for the past week I haven't been able to get the thought out of my head. It's not a new thought for sure, but it's never been THIS intense and persistant.
that's what's changed. Cutting my hair shorter seems to have given me some sort of... shove toward addressing my self image or something?
And maybe it's because it's finally me taking control of my self image rather than letting someone else dictate it (as a kid and even into adulthood my mother always had a say in how I wore my hair, she always convinced me i'd regret cutting it short and protested "but it's so pretty long!" and "it'll be so much more work if it's short!" and I believed that and so I put all thoughts and desires for it aside as impractical. Maybe that final act of taking ownership, PROPER ownership and not a half measure like last year's shoulder length (which was the hairdresser's decision, I wanted it chin length then but deferred to her judgement) but actual genuine real autonomy with no consideration for how others would react to it.
Whatever the case, I can't shake this and it's driving me nuts.
I keep scrambling through memories of childhood, seeking out any key events, any dysphoria I can pinpoint and say "yes, that right there, that's evidence, how did I not see it before!?" like I did when I finally worked out my sexuality. I've been hoping that like that did, the pieces would all click into place neatly and suddenly things would make sense but they aren't and i'm feeling more confused than ever.
Growing up I was for sure a massive tomboy, I wasn't much into typically "girly" things for the most part, preferring construction toys and dinosaurs and adventures. My mother bought me dolls but they usually ended up in a corner, forgotten in favour of my fossil collection or my train set.
I had Barbies but my only real interest in them was dressing them and then i'd put them away again. i didn't PLAY with them. I just liked coming up with interesting outfits. It appealed I suppose to my artsy side.
I was an artist, I drew constantly and made paperdolls (I say dolls, they were anthropormophic dragons) that my friend and I used to act out massive soap opera story lines. I usually took the male roles.
In most play if there was an option, I volunteered for the male role. I even went so far as the tie my hair up under a hat to dress the part for short films we made. I loved it, but it was always "just a game" and "because we had no guys to play that part" honest.
All these years i've assumed my desire to play the prince to my female friend's princesses was more based on my sexuality and desire to hug and kiss and be romantic with them and my child mind thinking "well you need to be a BOY for that" but what if it was more than that?
I never felt like I really fit in with my female friends, I always felt rather like an alien, a black sheep, an outsider and I was as a result of my awkwardness often actively excluded from their interactions.
But that could be that i'm autistic.
thing is, when I fell out with all the girls in my entire year at the age of 12 I ended up hanging out more with the boys and it honestly felt... better... I knew where I stood with them, I didn't feel as awkward and uncertain and like I was trying to be something I wasn't. I could be ME around them.
I always assumed this was because guys are generally a bit more accepting of oddness at that age than girls (see how many excuses and justifications i've made for myself over the years?) More direct and less difficult to accidentally offend.
I don't remember feeling overly dysphoric as a child, but I had a very gender neutral upbringing (my mother bought me dolls sure but my parents also bought me stuff I did like. My dad was especially good at KNOWING the sort of things i'd like because they were things HE liked lol. So I was pretty lucky in that respect) and I also went to a primary school that 1: didn't have gendered uniforms, or a uniform at all and 2: did EVERYTHING coed.
In fact, all sport was coed right up into highschool, we just didn't play contact sports. My only recollection of gender related issues with school was when I joined the rugby team out of spite. I didn't even LIKE rugby, I just resented being told I "couldn't play because I was a girl." I was all "i'll show you!"
The boys wouldn't give me the ball and ignored me. I quit after 2 sessions. I didn't show them at all. Bah. I just remember being SO indignant. "But I can play this game as well as you! HOW DARE YOU!"
Aside from being suuuuper awkward around my female peers and struggling with friendship groups, I don't really recall any gender related issues in myself back then. I wore what my mother made me to wear, preferring soft clothing that was easy to move in but not really that fussed if I had to wear a dress or a skirt (my mother loved girly things) but I did HATE pink. My mother loved pink and I always wished she'd pick another blooming colour, my dislike for the colour which came to signify this very cliche form of femininity I didn't resonate with at all only got worse as I got older.
But I think a lot of cis girls dislike pink for much the same reason don't they?
The pink walls in my bedroom gave me bad dreams (apparently) so I got to get new wallpaper, but I do recall my DELIGHT when we moved into a new house and my mother said of my new room "oh this was clearly a BOY'S room, do you want to redecorate?" (white walls, grey carpet, blue curtains, pretty neutral i'd have thought) and I said "NO! I love it!" because I did. It was a blank canvas, no pink! no frills! None of the trappings my mother so greatly induldged. And yeah, I liked that it was a "boys" room. GOOD! I wanted people to think I was a boy if they saw my room before meeting me. I was PROUD of the fact I wasn't typically girly, I LIKED being a tomboy.
I don't remember ever really feeling anything toward my body till 10, when I hit puberty.
I remember acutely the SHAME i felt. I resented my body for it, not just because it hurt but because I couldn't stand the way I was developing. I didn't want breasts, I didn't want curves, I wanted to stay child me. I always assumed this was because I was so young I wasn't ready to "be a grown up", that's always been my explanation but now i'm wondering...
I hated my growing breasts so much that I refused to wear a bra and I remember the chaffed nipples from my uniform shirt at 11 where my nipples would BLEED but it was, in my mind, preferable to accepting my bust and wearing a bra. I ended up wearing a tight cami top to strap them down, hide them and protect them from the chaffing without forcing me to "emphasise them" with a bra. For me, the bra itself was something I just couldn't face or tolerate. I put off wearing one for so so long and for years felt so so uncomfortable wearing one because they're really not comfortable. Underwires itched and pressed in bad places, straps itched, it wasn't till I discovered the lovely soft wireless t-shirt style bras that I became really able to tolerate the damn things as anything other than a horrible confining garment of discomfort and unpleasantness.
But was that dysphoria? Or rather, was it GENDER dysphoria or more typical "puberty is horrible and traumatising and I don't wanna deal with it" dysphoria
After that I grew to have a rather well.. hate/hate relationship with my body. It wasn't that I hated how I looked, I was honestly pretty apathetic toward my appearance beyond being self concious about my developing body and excess body hair (It wasn't that the hair made me feel wrong or "unwomanly", it was just that I knew i'd be teased if anyone knew I had a hairy stomach or chin hairs or whatever, and I didn't want to be teased)
I didn't hate my body hair, I hated other people's reactions to my body hair.
But I learned to just hide it rather than hurt myself to remove it. I mean, it wasn't causing me harm and it was fine to me, I preferred to wear long shirts and board shorts if swimming to conceal rather than remove the hair.
I don't really know why. I suppose I just didn't want the pain because it didn't bother ME and in my mind I was the only one who was gonna see it.
My periods were horrendeous, to the point where I was having to leave school because I was in too much pain and bleeding too heavily. Years and years of doctor appointments just resulted in progressively stronger painkillers until I developped a resistance to pretty much every over the counter pain killer you can get.
It reached a peak when I went to university at 18 and the pain became so bad that I would wish for death and would drink myself into unconciousness just to get through it.
It was seriously unhealthy and I knew that, but doctors were still being useless. I was so sick and so depressed by how sick I was that I dropped out of my university course (They convinced me to switch courses rather than retake my first year, I regret that)
When I was well I spent a lot of time with guys, a habit i'd picked up in highschool. Girls confused me, I felt I understood guys better. I felt more comfortable, safer even around them. I joined the roleplay society (because i'm a big nerd lol) and I liked being one of the few "girls" there. It felt good and honestly? I got a lot of positive attention for it. At the time I enjoyed boosting my low self esteem by dressing up, be it a costume or a very very short skirt and bunny ears, anything that would draw attention. I craved that attention. A smile, a glance, a "looking good!" comment made me feel so much better, so much happier in my own skin but ultimately, I was looking outward for validation because I couldn't find any inside. I wasn't dressing in a manner I wanted so much as a manner i KNEW would attract attention. I was using other people telling me I looked hot or whatever to give myself some sense of self. I was projecting not who I was, but who I thought other people wanted to see. I don't really know why. I was trying to find myself and just getting lost. I latched onto one thing I COULD own, being "the hot chick" even if I didn't really feel that hot. Just having boobs was enough for the geeks really. I lapped up that attention but ultimately, my relationship with a great many of them was extremely shallow and based solely on that mask, the costume, the persona, nothing more.
This became obvious when I stopped being "sexually available" because I started dating and suddenly I wasn't getting looked at, talked to, treated like someone worthy of their time and I desperately, oh so desperately wanted to be part of their world, I just didn't feel like I COULD be as myself. I was a girl, this was a male dominated space. Oh internalised mysogony, I foolishly and subconciously convinced myself the only way to be accepted in a group SO male dominated was to be desireable, rather than an equal. Clearly I forgot all those relationships i'd had prior to university where I had been accepted as "one of the guys", but of course, those were very small friendship groups, not an entire university society/club.
I also continued to rp online, something i'd done since I was about 14. I'd been playing male characters since about 15. I can't remember why or how it started, I assume it was simply an extention of the predominantely male characters in things I wrote (any girls were often very very tomboyish or outright gender non conforming in my stories) and games I played. I felt more at home with "he/him" pronouns, preferred to play a boy. I convinced myself that it was because I was seeking to escape myself and what better way to do that than an added layer of detatchment like being the opposite sex?
I still feel a surge of pride and joy when I remember one interaction when I was about 16 or 17 when one of the newer players was DEVASTATED to learn I was in fact a girl. She'd become convinced I was a boy from the way I typed and the way my character was and oh.. oh I was so happy! She was sad because she'd developped a bit of a crush on me and was sad to know I wasn't a guy. (aww) It never occured to her that people could play characters that weren't the same sex as them.
I said to myself "see? I'm so good at this rp malarky that I got gender NAILED!" (but only male gender... hmmmmm.)
I resented that the rp society wouldn't allow me to play male characters in table top games. I couldn't understand why. They claimed "oh we can't suspend disbelief!" and i'd argue "You can believe i'm an orc who can throw fireballs but me being a BOY is the line!?? are you for real?"
I found only a couple of people who'd allow it and even then they'd constantly slip up and misgender my character, much to my indignation (I screamed "I'm a BOY!" very loudly one session and got scolded by the other people in the room oops?)
When I was forced to play a female character I resented it. Even when i'd chosen to play female out of a sense of obligation I found it difficult to really get into character, to sink into her headspace. There has always been what feels like an invisible barrier there, a sort of.. block stopping me from settling into that skin. I always hated that thinking it made me an inferior roleplayer and writer to struggle with a more female mindset but it was just so alien to me. I always joked "I have a male brain in a female body" and people would laugh and nod and go "it's so true!"
It angered the feminist in me who insisted male and female brains aren't that different and playing or writing a woman should be no different to writing a boy so stop this ridiculous mysogonistic nonsense already!
But I still struggle. I just can't, no matter how I try, "think like a girl" and it drives me insane. (what even IS thinking like a girl? No for reals, what does that even mean?)
Anyway, my health still betraying me, My parents paid for a private specialist and within a week I had a diagnosis. Atypical PCOS. I was sat down and told that I had very low hormone levels, I probably wasn't ovulating, that nothing was quite right in there and I had abnormally high levels of free testosterone (something I remember thinking "cool" about, go figure. I suppose my mother always attibuted her healthy sex drive to testosterone so I didn't see it as a bad thing. It just made you a bit hairier, big whoop?)
I was told my ovaries were massively cystic and that I probably couldn't have children without medical intervention.
I was 19 years old, the news was devastating but it took a day to really sink in. I went home numb to my mothers, rationalising "well it's fine! I didn't want kids!" (an outright lie of course)
the next day I cried and cried and cried because I felt like my choices had been taken from me. I wasn't grieving the feeling of being "less of a woman", I was grieving the idea I might not be able to have the family I secretly actually really did want some day. I mean I didn't want kids right THEN and there, but I still wanted kids. Being told I couldn't if anything else made me want them MORE.
I was put onto medication to try to help which had pretty horrible side effects but I persevered and during this recovery stage I met a wonderful man and we really hit it off.
I'd dated before of course, he wasn't my first, but he was the first guy I felt I could really talk to about a lot of stuff. I was at a point in my life I was starting to really work out who I was (or so I thought) and felt confident enough to speak about my sexuality (he in fact helped me define myself as demisexual after stumbling upon the term in an article and thinking "this sounds exactly like how they described themselves!") and 6 months into our relationship I fell pregnant.
Pregnancy honestly sucked. I was so sick. I desperately loved this kid, but I hated being pregnant. Labour was even worse. We learned an important fact about my body. It really really really doesn't like doing typically "female" things. It hates ovulating, it hates mensturating normally, my cervix hates dilating too. And my body cannot tolerate the sort of pain that comes with labour.
Oh dear it really can't.
I felt like I was dying.
I required medical intervention to have my son, but I didn't care, I had my baby and he was perfect and tiny and mine. All mine.
It was almost worth it.
but then for 5 years we tried to have a second, and I ended up back at the endochronologist looking at my borked hormone profiles and discussing why my body didn't work right and what options we had.
I felt like a failure. Which is quite normal in that situation. (Surely pregnancy should have triggered massive dysphoria if I was trans right? R.. right?)
I had so many tests run and every one just raised more questions.
I had a remnant of wolfian ducts (Why did this delight me? This is such a wierd thing to be delighted by but it's almost like it explained something? I mean it doesn't, but it felt like it did. There's something about being told "you have remnants of the male duct system in place" that just made me feel kinda pleased. Like it made me not as much a girl?), I had a dip in my uterus, I had hypogonadism, no it was pcos, no no it was something else entirely.
Nobody had any clue.
they even tested my damn chromosomes.
Is it weird that I was faintly disappointed when they came back XX?
I joked to husband "well i guess I get an official 'girl' card now huh?"
Secretly though, I was gutted to learn I was well and truely "female" biologically. I told myself it was just because i'd wanted to be special or have some answer to why my body was so broken. Honestly though? It would have explained an awful lot. Alas, it wasn't the answer.
Fast forward a few years and I actually ended up having two more kids (miracles), and those pregnanies nearly killed me. Only my stubborn streak and love for those kids kept me going through the crippling nausea and the pain and the hip dysplasia and hypertension and preeclampsia. (I'm not allowed any more because my body HATES it and it is too dangerous, and honestly the idea terrifies me anyway. Noooo thanks. I did my time!)
I'd never really thought much about my body prior to all the fertility stuff but suddenly I learned a hell of a lot about female anatomy. Even so, I didn't find it empowering, i found it kinda interesting in an accademic way but i've always felt a certain disconnect to my body. I don't hate it, it just.. IS. Like.. my head is attached to this body and it's not going anywhere, but I don't really have to look at it so I can just sort of... not think about it. (Earlier today I pinpointed what it is, when I look at my naked self in a mirror I feel like my head is poorly photoshopped onto someone else's body. It's not a bad body really, a few issues here and there but ultimately it's curvy and attractive enough but it feels like it's someone elses. I don't feel distressed by it, i don't hate it, I just think it looks really "off" and wierd and tend to view my body in two separate chunks. Head/face and body, rather than one cohesive whole.)
Anyway that apathy toward it is fine. I enjoyed learning about the biology of it, examining it, discovering wierd things they never teach you in biology but ultimately it was an accademic excercise, not a body acceptance one.
My body is to me a canvas upon which to paint, upon which to drape clothing. It's a blank slate and just... there.
I have no dysphoria relating to my genitalia or breasts beyond "this outfit would look way better without these meat bags in the way, can I squish em down a bit and make it look nicer?"
I have no classic dysphoria there because I simply don't tend to acknowledge my body unless it's hurting me.
Unfortunatley it hurts me a lot.
After having my youngest I started to suffer cluster headaches and migraines which are triggered by progesterone.. or estrogen, we aren't actually sure which. I also developed hypertension and swelled up all over (estrogen retention apparently, causes you to retain fluid. Greaaat). The swelling caused me to gain a lot of weight and subsequently stop recognising myself in the mirror and especially in photographs. There was a huge disconnect, like it was someone else looking back at me, wearing my skin but badly. Oh it's creepy, and as a result I hate having my photo taken (In fact I only took some selfies a few days ago because my new shorter hair gave me the confidence to do so, wha? I didn't feel quite so "no, no no no, it's not me, it's not me, make it go away" about the whole thing) The dysphoria I felt was very real, but entirely related to weight gain, NOT gender.
Putting me on a micro dose of estrogen proved extremely dangerous, my blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels and the doctors told me I was not to ever ever ever take it ever again under any circumstances or i'd die. (nice). Progesterone just made me nauseated and bleed.. and bleed.. and bleed.
It was decided I don't react well to feminising hormones, at all. My body seems hyper sensitive to them. I joke i'm allergic to them but in all honesty, it feels like it.
When my progesterone levels start to spike I get hot flushes and as it drops I get horrible crippling headaches.
My life is ruled by these hormones and the chaos they wreak upon a body that really doesn't seem to have been designed to deal with them.
I feel like a car running on the wrong fuel. It doesn't work and it's just destroying the engine.
Part of me wonders if testosterone might actually work better, if it might turn out to be exactly what my body wanted after all. Of course it also could be just as bad as the feminising hormones but that thought keeps popping up and won't leave.
"maybe i'm not supposed to have female hormones and that's why i'm so sick all the time."
I'm not sure that's entirely rational or has any scientific basis but gosh the idea appeals to me.
Not only because I dream of a time where I am not sick and in pain but because when I close my eyes and think about myself, I actually really like the image of me as a cute boy.
Problem is, there's a niggling doubt that wonders if this desire for masculinity stems not from transgender feelings, but from a sense of desperation for some sort of solution and a large dose of resentment toward my female body for the health problems it and it alone has inflicted upon me. Do I want to be a boy because my mind is really male, or do I want to be a boy because i'm sick of being sick?
And that doubt is a big one stopping me from being certain. Because there have been so many times i've sobbed and wished I could just schlup the whole lot out of me and be done with it. Just take it all away, the ovaries, the uterus, all of it, scrap it.
The only thing that's ever stopped me from asking for a hysterectomy is fear it'll make things worse for me. It isn't reversable, so if it didn't help, I wouldn't be able to go back.
THAT stops me.
I have no guarentees it'll help, none that it won't change things for the worse. Otherwise i'd have whipped these suckers out years ago in desperation and spite. I mean, sure they gave me three gorgeous kids but they've served their purpose now, I have no further use or desire for them.
They're just spare parts now, taking up space and poisioning me.
And there's another thought. "I'm done with being a girl, it's served its purpose to me".
Thing is, growing up the thought you could be anything other than yourself, your body, your everything never occured to me. I had no real exposure to the idea of transgender or gender fluidity. It was a very black and white world. Boy or girl, that was it.
And even when trans started to be talked about, it was older adults, men becoming women, never women wanting to be men.
It "wasn't possible" I was led to believe. It was too difficult to turn an innie into an outie, they were a huge minority and you never saw any of them in media.
at all.
In fact I didn't encounter trans men till well into my adulthood when I stumbled upon some Youtube videos while researching a character who had wandered into my head as a transgendered male. I wanted to get it "right" so I delved into it completely under the guise of research but if i'm honest? Seeing those guys on camera I felt a pang of envy.
I didn't feel like I was dysphoric and "you needed to be dysphoric to be trans and dysphoria was horrible and awful and made you miserable" but they were so beautiful (handsome?) and confident and I wanted to look like them at least a little.
The closest I ever got was wearing boyish clothes sometimes. But they were girls clothes, so cut to fit my ample curves. I was never going to be mistaken for anything other than a girl dressed as a boy (think Peter Pan in panto) but that was, for the time, okay. I liked how I looked in boyish clothing. I thought I looked cuter like that than I did in a dress where I always felt really self concious about bits of me (my broad shoulders and upper arms for example) or constricted in the wrong places.
I also felt less constricted by social pressure to change my body to fit a more typical eurocentric beauty ideal, an ideal I always found stupid anyway but felt such overwhelming pressure to obey that I endured ingrown hairs from shaving andthe pain of plucking for years. I even had laser treatment at one point on my belly hair and it was SO painful and achieved nothing anyway (My mother talked me into it becuase she knew I was self concious about my stomach). If it was all "part of the costume" I could ignore those feminine rituals and demands.
Back then, that sated me on what I called "boy days" to my now husband. "Today I feel like being a bit of a boy" i'd say, and he'd tell me I was hot and we'd go about our day.
It was just one of my quirks, no odder than my "today I am a pirate" or "today I am a fairy, see my wings?". It was a costume. A costume that I enjoyed, but a costume none the less.
And I think a part of me wonders if it'll always be a costume. Another layer of armor to wear to hide whatever the real me is, rather than my final form.
And that makes me sad because I really rather WANT it to be the answer. I don't know why I do, but I do.
And for the past few days i've been fixating more and more and more on the idea of testosterone, on what I would look like more masculine. Of how it might feel to be mistaken for a boy. How my body might react to it, about embracing my existing masculine features more.
I've been going by masculine pronouns most of my life online, for the past 4 or 5 years i've been going by a male psudoname online or a gender neutral one and I admit, the other day when someone introduced me by that male name irl "have you met X? This is X" I felt a surge of delight. It's not a name i'd pick for myself, it's a nickname I was given and adopted, but it felt really nice to have someone introduce me as it like it was no big deal and not that weird for this tiny little lady to be called that very very male name.
Nowadays i'm so accustomed to being referred to as "he" that it takes me a moment to realise who people are referring to when they say "she" online. But irl i'm still not used to not just using feminine pronouns on myself out of habit. I keep catching myself saying "she" and "girl" and "us" when referring to women and it's habit, but I feel a bit guilty?
I don't mind them when I use them, I don't even really mind when husband calls me "woman" affectionately or "wife" when I yell "husband!" but I LOVE the idea of him calling me husband back.
But I shudder a little when someone I don't know very well refers to me as "she/her", almost like i'm in trouble or something, or being talked ABOUT rather than to? And I HATE people using my full name, I feel like i'm about to be scolded. All my life i've just never been called by my full name unless i've done something wrong and then when we came to the UK I shortened it to stop english people mispronoucing it intentionally to annoy me (eugh). The mispronouciation of the short form was WAY less grating and kinda cute.
But i'm not sure this is gender related at all and more just familiarity and such? I mean my best friend in high school and I used to call one another really rude derogatory things affectionately so...
I am fortunate to have an amazingly supportive husband who tells me he doesn't care what gender I identify as, he loves me for me, not my shape. He took me out clothes shopping yesterday to buy some more masculine clothing becuase I expressed a desire to do the cross dressing properly this time.
He's of course still trying to process all this but so am I, and the fact I keep on second guessing everything isn't helping.
I mean I LIKE skirts, I started wearing them around the time I had my eldest because finding trousers that fit my strange shaped body was really really difficult and frustrating and I was tired of uncomfortable clothes. Skirts were easier to fit and came in more interesting patterns and colours in general, so I embraced them and now have a wardrobe that's like 80% skirts (which is curious because as a kid I wore trousers ALL THE TIME and wasn't so keen on tight fitting tops either. I liked to be a bit more shapeless or have layers, made me more comfortable and I thought looked cuter. The look? Very boyish)
As an adult I stopped caring so much, I suppose once you've pushed a person out of yourself and had a nurse grab your boobs to help you feed said infant you stop being as self concious about your body or something. I dunno. (seriously after 2 high risk pregnancies left me poked and prodded and fertility treatment before that, I felt rather like a slab of meat more than a person and just stopped really... giving a damn. I got too used to being effectively dehumanised so you just kinda lay on the bed, let them prod you, whatever.)
Plus I was an adult, it didn't matter so much any more.
But over the years my wardrobe has drifted less into clothes I LIKE and more into clothes that are comfortable or that my mother bought me and as i'm too cheap to go buy clothes for myself, I just wear them because I don't care.
I mean I hate pink but I still wear a pink shirt when I have nothing else clean because eh, it's clean and I dun wanna deal with anything else. I HATE it, it's hideous, it's a very garish barbie pink (the exact shade I loathe) but if i'm wearing it I can't see it so...
Clothes for me have honestly become something of a habit rather than a joy.
I used to feel like I was expressing myself in my clothing, what I wore was ME but nowadays it's just "it's clean, it fits, it'll do" 90% of the time.
I'm not sure what happened. I suppose kids happened, depression happened, it was just easier to stop caring.
But.. I DO like skirts and I do have several in my collection that I really do like. Are they me? I don't know. I don't really know who "me" is, but they're very comfortable and i'm not sure I want to give up wearing them. Husband said "but you have girly days where you like to get dressed up" and I was thinking about it and I haven't actually done that in quite a while honestly. And often I make excuses for why i'm dressed up to cover for my discomfort at having done it. I feel like a child getting into their mother's shoes and makeup and being caught out. All "uh.. you weren't meant to see this, this was for me... " Then I feel I have to justify WHY i'm wearing makeup (Which I never actually wear usually because I can't be bothered and suck at applying it anyway) or why i've dug out my extremely pretty posh frock for the day (usually it's because I was feeling down and wanted to dress up to cheer myself up. Spending that time putting on that costume helps my mood, distracts me, but I feel self concious explaining that it's a distraction technique. It's just "yeah I wanted to be girly today" but really? I don't think it's "girly" more "special" and let's face it, female clothing is substantially more GLAM)
But when I think about what that means I feel a bit of a clench in my gut. I don't want to be seen as "just some girl" on those days. I feel like wearing skirts or a tight top that shows off my curves somehow undermines this whole "I want to be a boy" thing and invalidates the whole argument.
But I hate the idea of having to restrict my fashion style to correlate with some stupid gender nonsense because gender politics annoys me.
and then i'm like "but if you think gender is a load of nonsense constructed by society, WHY does being thought of as a boy matter to you?"
and I can't explain that one.
I mean, if gender is "just a construct" and not real, why do I not just keep on as I am and just exist and ignore pronouns and such?
A while ago I described myself as "gender apathetic" because I thought "well I haven't got dysphoria, I don't sit and stare at my body and hate it and try to will it away and I don't feel uncomfortable in clothing of either gender so I must just be neutral on the whole thing..."
But if that were true I wouldn't be OVERTHINKING THIS RIGHT NOW!
But why NOW? that's the other thing bugging me. Am I having a midlife crisis or something? Why is it that only now, at 33 am I starting to question my gender identity? Is it because gender non binary stuff is more in the collective conciousness nowadays? Is it because i'm just so tired of being ME that this feels like a way to totally change? (eugh that sounds unhealthy and really diminishing) is it because I cut my damn hair?
I don't get why it's only really coming up NOW.
I mean I lived my whole life up to this point only mildly irritated by my gender right? Didn't I
Am I just trying to be special and unique and different like some sort of loser? But then I remind myself "dude, why would you intentionally do this to yourself for funs? You're gonna get so much if you transition, deal with hate you've thus far avoided all your life because you pass as straight and cis and thus get left alone. Suddenly you won't be either of those things, you'll be gay passing and trans and people will potentially want to hurt you!"
Unless i'm actually a massochist...
I don't think I am.
I mean i'd rather not get beaten up for existing or have slurs screamed at me by people. I get enough problems being autistic and foreign.
but the thing is, how do you KNOW that it's right for you? How do you KNOW that transitioning is the way to go? how do you know the feelings won't pass and you'll go back to feeling "okay" like you always did before?
Do I want to be a guy all the time or do I just want to pass as male some of the time? I don't KNOW! I genuinely don't know and of course there's that whole fear of how the hell to explain that to the kids, to school, to my family, to husband's family... whether the reality is something he could really handle after all...
it's daunting and I want to be SURE but i'm not. Because I search through my past and I think "that doesn't really sound dysphoric enough" "there's logical alternate explanations for all these things."
I feel... scared and shy but also sort of foolish. I feel like i'll be laughed at if I ask people to use masculine pronouns, that i'll be teased like I was teased as a child for being "wierd"
and that makes me go silent, slog on as I always have, just suck it down and exist in autopilot.
This has really gone on for an age hasn't It? I mean I did warn you at the start.
Still, any advice or insight would be great here.
What is going on with me? WHY now? Eugh...just.. why?
But I tried to imagine myself in 10, 20 years time as a man and I just... can't.
I can imagine myself as a man tomorrow, but long term it becomes far more fuzzy. I love the idea, I feel excited when I think about suddenly presenting as a teensy little gay man (I'm super short lol, it doesn't actually bother me. I'll just claim i'm a hobbit! hah) but is this just my depressed stupid brain trying to find an out for the "I don't want to be me anymore" feelings I get so often?
Because a good like.. 60% of my life over the past 20 years i've thought "i don't want to be me anymore" and felt a desperate surge of hopelessness at the knowledge I can't stop existing that easily.
Is this just an attempt to run from my problems?
Last night I felt SO SURE I was in fact trans, today? I'm not so sure.
Am i more gender fluid? Or am I just confusing myself by overthinking everything and obsessing?
I think of being female and it doesn't make me happy or excited, it just... IS. My current gender is sort of this boring, bland, vanilla default. A "well it's better than nothing, It'll do" sort of situation. It's beige.
The thought of being a trans man feels technicolour.
But of course i've NEVER been that typically feminine and find most cliche girly stuff really aggrivating and confusing or just flat out stupid. (I seem to have a lot of self hate toward my gender which manifests as mysogyny but I don't know why. I think it's resentment for never fitting in and being rejected by the girls in my social circle. Like.. fine, i didn't wanna be in your club anyway! )
ARGH i'll stop typing now. This essay got way too long.
