| I was born biologically female. However, most of my life I have been running from that fact. I was just one of the guys in elementary school. I’d wear sports jerseys and board shorts. I’d play football and basketball on all boys’ teams. I even got an “honorary dude name” from my all-male group. I chose a name that I just thought sounded cool, Marco. Marco became me. I would draw myself as Marco, with chin-length, wavy hair, baseball caps, and football jerseys of my favorite team. However, once I reached middle school, Marco disappeared. I knew not where he went, but he faded away into the mist. Even so, I continued with a masculine appearance, wearing caps (and shoving my hair into them so that it looked shorter) , shorts, loose jeans, mens’ vans, and hoodies (mainly to cover up my chest). I only wore dresses and jewelry when I was forced to and my hair was never done. It didn’t really hit me until 8th grade that I didn’t feel female. Something about my body felt off, like I wasn’t supposed to be in it. Then, I stumbled across the words “androgyne” and ”nonbinary.” I finally could properly grasp what I was feeling. There was a catch. Actually, two. One is that my mom has never felt so keen about my masculine leaning behavior. Whenever I refused to wear the school uniform skirts, my mother would say in a biting tone “Do you just want to be a boy?” More recently, I asked if I could buy a vest and bow tie to wear for jazz band. My mom snapped back with “You can’t go wearing things like that. You’ll look like a boy. You can’t look like a boy. “ Second thing is that I go to a pretty intolerant Catholic school. Kids will blurt out in class “there are only two genders!” I can’t bind in school, much less buy myself a binder. Sometimes I feel really dysmorphic when people call me a girl, but I’m very scared to come out. So far, I’ve come out to four individuals also in the LGBT+ community. I was planning to out myself to everyone during the summer between college and high school. However, that’s three years away and I’m not sure how much of this I can take. Being forced to dress in a feminine way is awful, being known as a girl is terrible, and not being able to express myself the way I want to is torture. I just don’t know what to do.
CONSIDER THIS:
HELP YOURSELF:
|
It’s on a Spectrum
