Hi everyone, it's been a while since I posted anything on EC, but I feel like I need to get some stuff off of my chest and I can't think of any other place to do it. I like guys. I have established this as a fact over the past few months and have come out of the closet completely about a month ago. It's been weird, fun and exhausting all at once. However, something went wrong somewhere, because I've been having this identity crisis ever since. I don't know who I am, what I want and where I want to go in life. More specifically, I don't know what I want to wear, how I want to dress and whether I want to stay male or present myself as a female or something else completely. The whole gender identity thing has really been freaking me out, and it's turned into something of an obsession I return to every so many hours. I have a tendency to do this with other things (I'm also a big hypochondriac, for instance) so it might just be that but this is driving me insane with worry and fear and panic and I need some answers. I don't want to be a woman in the sense that I don't want my body to change. I don't like my body and don't feel extremely comfortable in it most of the time, but changing sex seems like it wouldn't help and only make things worse. I like my face the way it is, and I can't imagine myself as a female. I just can't. I've tried drawing it and it just feels wrong and scary. At the same time, however, I have this odd curiosity about what it would be like to be a woman, but only as a completely separate individual from this body I currently inhabit. Like I'd have to have two bodies. And it's this curiosity which triggers fear, panic and a lot of feverish reasoning to try and rid myself of anything feminine I might have in me. (It's gotten slightly out of hand; I'm even terrified of writing stories from a woman's perspective or playing RPG's as a female because that would somehow confirm my worst fears now, for example). In the end maybe it comes down to expectations. There are things I like about being a guy, but as someone who isn't very masculine and who also happens to be gay, I feel like I never meet the standards 'required' of a male. I've never fit in with other guys, because I'm always comparing myself to them. I feel uncomfortable with my body because I'm always comparing myself to other guys, and I feel like I'm never enough as a male (it's one of the reasons I hate showering with other people so much). As a woman different things are expected of you, and you're also much more flexible when it comes to appearance, interests and stuff. You can wear pants or dresses, for instance, whereas men cannot (at least not without being harassed and laughed at). But then I feel no inclination to cross-dress either. I don't want this identity to mix with anything like that because, again, it terrifies me. If I were to become a woman, ever, I'd want to be a lesbian (which is, ironically, the very thing I can never be), and wear the same clothes that i wear now (flannel, with a passion). I don't want to be straight. Straight sex is gross, and the gender roles within a straight relationship just aren't my thing - no offense to anyone who happens to be in one. I want a gay relationship, where both partners are equals emotionally and physically, and where there is lot's of non-straight sex . I've been looking up some information on gender identity as a whole and came across androgynous. Is this like a gender 'neutral' term? Where you might still be male or female physically but do not let yourself be boxed in by society's (and your own) expectations of what you should and shouldn't be? I like this term a lot and have coined it for several weeks now in between the feverish worrying about all this shit. What exactly does it entail? How normal are these questions for someone like me? Is it something to be expected after coming out as gay and figuring out a more 'real' identity for yourself? Or am I trans? Or genderfluid? Or anything else? And please, for the sake of my sanity and psychological well-being, am I crazy?
