a month ago today i turned 23. today i am reading The Gender Dysphoria Bible to see if my experiences line up. some stuff is more apparent to me than others. i don’t quite have any “phantom limb” trauma, i do feel like i am stuck in a body i don’t belong in and i keep growing more and more irritated. one of my big problems right now is i don’t know if i was like this as a kid. i feel like my childhood has been stolen from me, i remember almost none of it. the stuff that i do remember, i wonder if i am twisting in some way. i used to hang out with the women in my family over the men 9 times out of 10. i still do. i would much rather be in a room with the women in my family than the men. i think i have feminine sensibilities but does that make me a woman?

a month ago today i turned 23. today i went out to dinner with my mom. she knows i have been having a tough time but she does not know why. luckily, i got off easy. she did not call me “son” or anything gendered really. i wonder sometimes if she can see the discomfort in my eyes when she calls me that. i wonder if my friends notice that i pretend not to hear, or that i turn my head/walk away when they refer to me as “he.” i wonder if they know that i paint my nails because it is the one little thing that keeps me sane on some nights. i wonder if they know i bought a skirt, knowing that i can only wear it in my room with the door locked and the blinds down.

a month ago today i turned 23. tomorrow i am going to see a movie with my friends. i would like to use the make-up i have but i don’t know how they’d react. one of the friends i am going with misgenders his brother all the time, and i think he misgendered a trans friend he has–who isn’t out but we both know even though i’ve never met her, he’s literally the one who told me. i will have to settle for nail polish and a purse that will be tuned out by the most masculine pair of jeans anyone on the planet has ever seen. yay.

a month ago today i turned 23. soon i have my first meeting with a new therapist. i have tried therapy in the past. it didn’t really work for me. i felt more like it was a punishment than anything. my mom helped me find this new one. okay, she did all the work. when she found a therapist that would take our insurance she texted me a number and said i needed to call him. my first thought was “HIM?!” i don’t know what i have ever done to convince her that i feel comfortable talking to a man about my problems.

a month ago today i turned 23. today i am crying in my room, writing a blog to a website you have to be in a serious situation to have heard of (someone in a crisis chatroom told me about it). i wish that someone had asked me some of this stuff before. i never even thought about it. i hardly even wondered. i never really thought of myself as a man. i didn’t think it mattered. is that what was wrong with me? did my thoughts follow death so quickly because i was born to a body i do not belong in?

a month ago today i turned 23. today the feeling is there for a moment and then it is gone. i can feel the breadth in my shoulders, the stubble that i missed on my jaw, the hair that is growing back on my legs. and then, just for a second, i feel fine. i put my shoulders back, i shake my head, raise my chin et voila. i’m a girl. for for just a moment. for an attosecond, i am her. only to realize that there is an infernal beast where my body should be. something that i don’t recognize and don’t want to recognize. i don’t even know what the point of posting here is, honestly. an outlet? i guess. it feels more like asking a question to a room full of people who are barely paying attention and are also asking questions that you don’t know the answers to either. i’m not going to get an answer. that’s fine. there probably isn’t one. no one can tell me who i am, why should i even trust them to

i’ve done college essays that required like 300 words less than what this one has. sorry it’s so long but i always delete them anyway