At some point in the middle of all this nonsense I thought to myself “I'm nonbinary and a writer, but it's not like I'm a nonbinary writer.”
But whenever I had a first person narrator and could avoid it, I carefully avoided mentioning their gender. I also tend to pick gender neutral names.
There have been several characters of mismatched gender/sex. Lots of themes of disconnects between body and mind. Unconventional gender roles and expression. Maybe I'll go into detail about then here one day.
So it turns out that while I was never writing about being nonbinary, I was still writing while being nonbinary.
Honestly this is the thing that gives me certainty in what I am the most.
Been in a good bent lately. Can be kind of scary though, not feeling bad about the way you look. Even though it's unpleasant it's a constant reminder that you need to change the things you're planning to, an affirmation that you are who you think you are.
On the flip side though, the euphoria, the good things never go away.
Just gave the links to this thing out to a bunch of people. Hi, if you're reading this. :)
I guess it goes without saying that I'm only speaking for myself, and never mean to generalize. Everyone's different, which is a tiring truism. But it is true.
I've always been real skittish about posting under anything tied to my real world identity, both out of privacy and a general discomfort with who I am.
Luckily none of that applies to my new “real name” so I guess I'll share it here.
Hello, my name is Ezra (they/them). It's nice to meet you at last.
The way I currently present myself to the world is very male. I have short hair, wear outfits that you would imagine a man would wear.
Also a binder. But I'm pretty sure that's for me than for anyone else.
But I'm pretty sure my male presentation is just compensating for the completely female biology underneath. If that changes, I think a lot of what I wear would would change too.
By the way, I haven't passed in a long while. I used to, every once in a while. I think I need a hair cut.
A couple coworkers asked me about how I picked my new name. It was nice to talk about it.
The default at work is to accept and not ask questions, which is probably for the best. But nothing makes this feel more real than having to answer questions about it. :)
Had a good run where I thought I was good as I was.
Then got called miss. Hello stab of disappointment. It's been a while. I thought you were gone.
I guess I'm pretty sure I'm nonbinary now, but I don't really know what that means, in specific for me.
So far I've done all the things I know I needed to do: change my name, declare myself apart from womanhood. I've done the easy things too, like cutting my hair and wearing a binder.
Just the big, potentially permanent choices left.
It's hard to gauge whether what I've done is enough, whether it'll be enough for the future. Normally I'd just throw care to the wind and figure it out by running headlong into it. But there's one big important thing about hormones.
Which is my partner. Almost seven years together and my best friend in every way. And unfortunately, very much attracted to women. And neither of us can say what will happen to that attraction in the future.
And while it's true it's never a good idea to suppress yourself for someone else, it's hard to think of something worth more to me than him.
So we're proceeding with caution, and cherishing what we have while we have it.
I question myself a lot, but I keep coming back to the answer that I gave when I never thought about it.
I could run myself around in circles thinking about what gender I am and how I fit in with trans narratives and how far I'll need to take my transition, but when it comes down to it,
I always presented myself as genderless in online forums.
I avoided giving genders to the characters I could in my writing.
From the start, I told medical professionals that I was nonbinary.
It wasn't until I started thinking deeply and researching and trying to explain myself to others that I began to question it.
Not that that was bad. Questioning my answer gave me more certainty in it. It also made me think about how my answer interacts with the world. Which it will have to do if it is to live anywhere outside of my head.