why now?
Something I was asked by my doctor during my assessment was: Why now? Why look to pursue surgery now? Why come out to everyone and make these changes now? I turn 30 in just over a month. I’m not a kid, or a teen anymore. Far from it. I suppose I should know who I am by now, should have had that figured out, but honestly do any of us ever really know who we are? Ever?
My entire life I’ve felt just... Odd. Weird. “Other” a lot of the time. Not just because I’m a nerd (that’s not helped lol), but I have never really fit in properly with the majority of your average girls or women. I felt the “odd one out” amongst my family who were predominantly female. In offices staffed with majority women, I felt like a complete outsider. I’ve very rarely “clicked” with girls and I get along a LOT easier and faster with guys. Any age, any background, any education level, getting along with guys was much smoother.
I put it down to “they just don’t “get” you”. I didn’t get the same feeling with my friends, male or female. We shared enough of the same interests, had the same sense of humour, liked the same things etc. But that’s how it works right? The people you click and vibe with, you make friends with. Age was maybe also a factor in “not gelling” with other women. People also come from different walks of life.
“You're not just a big weird freak, you’re just made from entirely different moulds, right? You can’t get along with everyone?”
It’s only within the last few years that I started finding out about gender issues, nonbinary specifically. The more and more I read into it, the more stats and facts and studies I absorbed, the more little bits of information, the more RELATABLE AS HELL the stories I was reading were getting... the more I started to consider; Hey wait a minute. This is all making FAR too much goddamn sense.
It took a while for things to start adding up to the point I started making changes in my life or thinking differently about myself. All the things I was learning, and how they related to me and the way I think and feel, started to change my outlook on myself. About 2 and a half years ago, I started thinking to myself: “Right. I’m Nonbinary. This is me!” I tried it on, entirely privately, non-verbally. It’s how I thought about myself. And it... fit. It worked. It felt right.
Some time later, I told my husband and a few very close friends “hey I think I might be nonbinary” or at the very least “I’m having very weird Gender Feelings you guys...” The ability to talk it out and bounce ideas and feelings off my friends, some of whom are trans themselves, has been utterly invaluable. Last year I made more baby steps towards accepting this strange new-but-not-new part of myself, that I’d managed to finally put a name to. I told a few more people. I would drop it into casual convo. I made posts around pride week and national coming out day. The binder I’d bought to wear for cosplay purposes, I started wearing on a more casual everyday basis. I -embraced- my masculine swings a lot more often and dressed how I wanted to dress, moved how I wanted to move, spoke how I wanted to speak. The way that felt most natural at that time. I stopped worrying I “looked super butch” or “like a lesbian” when I looked and dressed more masculine.
And it all felt - really good-.
Imagine you’ve gone the majority of your life, thinking like.. “theres just something not quite right here.” It’s nothing causing you physical pain. There are no real symptoms you can put a finger on. “Not fitting in with women”, “not being into girl stuff”, “having body confidence and body image issues”, “liking to wear boys clothes/have short masc haircuts/wearing cologne/etc/etc/etc” were all just weird little facets of yourself you’d had to live with and feel weird and “other” about.
And then suddenly someone goes: hey that weirdness you’re feeling? There’s a name for that. You’re not just a freak! You’re not different all of a sudden, nothing has changed, but aaaall the stuff that made you “you”, makes a heck of a lot more sense now that you can put a name on it.
This is not “Who I Am Now”. This is Who I Have Always Been.
It all started to make sense. Everything. I wasn’t just weird. I didn’t have to worry about “looking like a man” anymore. My dysphoria made SENSE. It sucked ass, and still made me feel like shit, but it made sense! I’m not broken.
The biggest “click” and the thing that lit a real fire under me was New Years eve 2017. It was a themed party, and people were all in costumes. I went as a male character and wore my binder (I’m going to talk a bit about costuming as male characters later because this is also Important I think). I’d had a few drinks, and when it came time to take the costume off and get into something a bit more comfy after midnight (and because I was coming to the end of my binder time. I like to bind safely) I found that it was HEARTRENDINGLY UPSETTING... to take the binder off and “go back to being girl-me again”. I’d always been really sad after a solid weekend of dressing as a man for male costumes and having to “go back to normal” but this was like an intense version of that feeling. That I’d spent 29 years doing this, living with and putting up with “girl-me”. Like that version of myself wasn’t the real me at all. That I was facing another year, approaching thirty, and that this was going to be how things were for the rest of my life unless I did something about it.
January 2nd I sent out an email to my chosen doctor (I’d been researching it all for months at the back end of 2017 but done nothing about it) to try and book an appointment to pursue top surgery, which I told my husband about and we had a long discussion around.
February 4th I came out to my mum and my two sisters who had a lot of questions but were incredibly supportive. They told me that “actually that makes a lot of sense...” considering my childhood, and while they were worried for me from a “this is a surgery you cannot come back from, I hope you’re sure” point of view, supported me there too.
Last month I went a lot more public with my gender and I’m trying to make more and more people aware of it, since I interact with large groups of varied people as part of cosplay and costuming. I’ve literally faced nothing but support (and questions of course, but I’ve got all the time in the world for supportive people who just want to understand things so they can better help and support their friends and others like me.)
It’s been thirty years. And I still have a long way to go. But I’ve honestly never been more comfortable within myself and with every babystep I’ve taken towards hacking my way out of this shitty little “desperately trying to conform to gender standards” chrysalis I’ve been trapped in for my entire life, the better I’ve felt.
