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Accepting myself as genderfluid

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by Ravienclaw, Jan 14, 2015.

  1. Ravienclaw

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    May 31, 2014
    Messages:
    183
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    Location:
    California
    Gender:
    Female
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    This is gonna be a pretty long story about how I discovered, and finally accepted, myself as genderfluid. I apologize, but it feels really good to get all this off my chest xD
    I have my really girly days and my much more tomboyish days, but usually I'm pretty cool with the gender I was assigned at birth.
    Except when I'm not.
    For a long time I've been dealing with a cyclic form of depression that, to avoid going into details, hits hard and gets really ugly really fast. During the worst parts of it I tend to get extremely frustrated with my own body. Sometimes I flinch when people refer to me as she/her. This is something that I have been dealing with since I started middle school, and I am now a sophomore in high school (that adds up to 5 years for those of you outside the American school system and now that I'm typing this I realize that dates back to around the time I started puberty) but it took a while for me to realize that was the source of the problem.
    When I was about 13 and I still hadn't quite put the pieces together, I'm not sure what made me do it but I took one of my brother's baseball caps and carefully tucked my hair in it so that it looked short like a boy's. I made a makeshift binder out of a couple sports bras and put on the most masculine clothing I had. When I looked in the mirror I started crying. It felt so right and I didn't understand what was happening to me, mainly because I didn't really want to be a boy (not permanently at least) but at the moment I didn't want to be a girl either. Which was really confusing, because most of the time I actually liked being a girl, and I had just started to accept myself as a lesbian. Mostly I just thought I was weird and I tried to forget about it.
    I didn't come across the term genderfluid until I was 14, and of course I remained painfully oblivious to the possibility that that's what I was. I didn't talk to anyone about it. I tried to put it in the back of my mind.
    That's about the time when I met my ex-girlfriend.
    The depression came back a few times while I was with her and during those times it literally, physically hurt when she called me beautiful, and I remember a couple times just contemplating calling her and saying "I can't be your girlfriend because I'm not a girl." Each time it went away I basically pretended it never happened, and never once mentioned it to her (which wasn't exactly easy. Try explaining to your girlfriend why you started crying when she just complimented you on your "sexy curves")
    Now that that relationship is over (thank god), I have had quite a bit of time to myself. And sometimes a lot of alone time can lead a person to do impulsive things, such as make a public facebook post proclaim that my preferred pronouns are they/them, and change my gender on all forms of social media to genderfluid because God, why didn't I do this ages ago?
    When the adrenaline rush from this simple act finally wore off I panicked. Until I realized... what's the big deal? So far all of my friends have been completely supportive, both about my sexuality (which is a whole other story) and through my confusion about my gender identity. If they can accept me, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to accept myself. What I've finally come to realize is that most of the time I'm a girl, but sometimes I'm not. And I'm starting to become okay with that.
     
  2. WyldStyle

    Full Member

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    Nov 27, 2014
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    Location:
    Michigan
    Congrats, I'm glad you were able to come to terms over who you are. :slight_smile: I hope things keep heading in the right direction for you now.
     
  3. AlexPanda94

    AlexPanda94 Guest

    I am glad that you were able to accept yourself. :slight_smile:
    - Congrats!