Hey everyone, I apologise for the length of this post, but I need to get it all out. From about early February to the start of May I went through a period of being intensely effeminate both in speech and mannerisms and general behaviour, such that my newest flatmate, B, who moved in that month, thought I was unquestionably gay or bi literally before she'd walked through the front door. Even my mental music track was filled with girly pop songs every day. This wasn't me acting in a camp way, it was just a spontaneous expression of how I was inside - I felt girly, so I instinctively acted that way. I've had these periods before so with a bunch of other reasons I finally decided to identify as genderfluid. Then, my effeminism dropped off very suddenly. A few days after that I had what I will call a "jam spike". For clarity, "jam" refers to the core of somebody, "cake" is the next layer up, and then the part everyone sees and most people live in is the "icing". B explained to me that jam spikes happen when you're ignoring a serious issue and your subconscious decides to kick you in the face about it. In this case, my jam spike manifested as a very intense certainty in my core identity that I was a girl. I didn't feel like a girl, I was a girl. I've never felt anything like it - it was a completely new feeling, and while I was okay with it, the sudden onset and the societal baggage which followed threw me into a tailspin. To cut a long story short, I spent a lot of time talking with B and another friend about it. B, who loves me romantically, said that she wasn't entirely straight anyway so it didn't matter to her whether I identified as a boy or a girl. Hearing that was a relief because this was the first time a peer in my age group had accepted me as a girl as well as a boy, and I've been craving that for years without knowing how to ask for it safely. There were a few more jam spikes in the days following. After a conversation concluding in B telling me I should just accept the feeling and not be afraid of it, I went to bed and on the edge of sleep I felt the "You're a girl" feeling again but without the baggage, and I was pretty happy with it. In my dreams that night, I was a girl inside for the first time ever. Since then, the feeling has only occasionally returned. I finally realised I loved B a few days later and we started dating, and with that I was finally able to accept my girly side without fighting it and there's been no trace of my girly side since. I accept that a lot of anxiety over what people think has surrounded my bursts of girliness over the years, but I don't believe my girliness was caused by anxiety. I'm told I've given off a feminine vibe even during my most cisgender and straight moments when I've been happy with my male identity. What confuses me is why I suddenly knew I was a girl, but then this dropped off. I've felt girly before, but never dead certain that I was a girl at least part of the time. I know that is how I felt. Again, if it were anxiety-driven then I don't understand why it would appear that night anxiety-free, and the feeling would have occurred before during previous girly phases as well, yet it has not. To me, I doubt any cis person would feel that, but it's such a one-off I'm not sure if my mind is playing tricks. In addition, having come out to two other people that I may not be cis, I'm embarrassed and concerned - it is not a subject to be taken lightly. So what's going on?
At the risk of projecting myself, do you think you could be bigender? I've read that some people are alternating bigender and might go through periods of different gender identification, while some are simultaneous. I'm simultaneous. In fact, I'd say it's like two people living in me, and I've just learned to filter one when I need to and express it when it's safe. The one me likes music like Bjork, Lana del Rey, etc, loves yoga pants, and the other me likes Metallica and wants to wear chinos all the time. We benefit from each other. That might sound torturous, but over time it's become a huge blessing.
I suppose it's possible. I've had similar jam spikes over the past four years, it's just that I don't think I really recognised them as "You're a girl, dude." This time that was the first thing I thought. Part of my confusion comes from the effeminate period - I don't know whether that was wholly driven by my need for others' acceptance of my feminine side, or whether the jam spike was my brain saying I needed to deal with my femininity issues. But it's interesting that the effeminate period finished a few days before the jam spike rather than with the jam spike. I've noticed that choir rehearsals also reset me to feeling myself after the jam spikes, so I don't know what's going on there either.
