This is gonna be a long haul. TW: Childhood abuse, systemic trauma TL;DR: I have gender dysphoria and don’t understand what to do with it. Therefore I’m going to drawing boards again using psychoanalysis to try to get a better answer as to why.

Alright, so I grew up in a slightly broken household with strict gender norms externally enforced upon me. My parents themselves were not entirely strict about what girls or boys should be doing, but nonetheless raised me according to our gender assigned at birth. The problem was that I grew up in a Slavic immigrant community. A lot of babushkas there, including my grandparents, were very traditional with their raising. So I probably was influenced to adopt more traditionally feminine roles like the caretaker or the manager or the healer or whatever just because of that. I was also raised around boys (all of my cousins and godbrothers were male). This created an interesting environment. I learned to simultaneously be in masculine spaces without being allowed to be masculine. But more on that later.

My father was an abusive drunkard; my mother was a rock holding us all together. I always witnessed the abuse. I wasn’t the one who was ever it was inflicted upon, and the fights happened little enough as to be able to be “ignored” with an IPad and a trip to grandparents. I’m 16, if you were curious. I learned early on to live walking on eggshells. Straight A’s/B’s, advanced elementary school class, never broke a rule in the slightest, etc… and whenever there was a problem, it was to be hidden.

The problem first came knocking on my door in 2019, when I moved from the city to god-knows-where. I had already been dealing with social issues, but a stable friend group in 3rd grade made my life relatively okay. I still felt like there was inherently something off about the way that I acted to be subconsciously excluded in the way that I was, but it was what it was. Being in a rural area made that much worse. I had trouble fitting in at school, had acquaintances but not friends, and felt a lot more powerless in my loneliness. Now I couldn’t even see my godbrothers—they were hours away. Then the pandemic came.

2020 was my curse and my cure. I had already been using the internet to cope with reality excessively, but that had amplified by the time pandemic society adjusted my way of life. 2020 reminded me of the power of make-believe, of roleplaying (I used to heavily enjoy playing social games on Roblox and trying to win the appeal of others by looking cool or e-dating with other kids). 2020 also introduced me to the idea that gender wasn’t irrefutable. There was a large spike in gender identities, in activism, in cultural knowledge, and in that frenzy, I learned something new.

After the pandemic hit, my years became hard. I recognize now that I was plausibly depressed each and every school year from fifth grade up until the current day (rising junior). I coped by make-believe. I coped by being a boy. It seems like society forgets so much more of your mistakes as a man. Everyone seems to give you more attention and space. For the first time in my life, I was popular. Sure, on a random game on a random video game, but it felt liberating by all means. I also became part of the in-group, part of the drama, part of the relationships, everything. It felt genuinely great. But it came with a cost. I had to relearn everything from the start in order to believably be a boy. It felt like a trap that drained me of my creative freedom and will. That’s why I tried to keep my two lives separate—one in the real world, a girl, and one in the digital world, a boy. But the lines seemed to always blur, and my masculinity eventually consumed me whole. That’s when I get fed up with being restricted and rebel by being fully feminine. Then I get reminded of why I steered away from femininity, and turned to masculinity, and the cycle repeats, and would repeat all throughout middle school and the beginning of high school.

Over time, the roleplaying became much easier, and it was very easy to convince people of my “manhood” because I replicated so many mannerisms I saw. I had a lot of feed, after all: Korean mangas (manhwa). I read a lot of books about relationships between two men, and still do now. I like the sense of equality of same-sex relationships (yes, I read wlw too) and I also watched anime, obsessively. Most shonen are patriarchal and had masculine leads, so I guess I absorbed some of the undertones of that as well.

And here I am, 16 years old and lost. Being masculine has almost become my home, but I do genuinely enjoy being feminine from time to time. I don’t know who I am or where I’m going. I don’t know what I can stably identify as. I, from freshman year to now, have identified as non binary for the sake of allowing the swings between the two gender spectrums, but more things have been leading me to believe I might be most stable as a demiboy or some other masculine-leading identity. I just shy away from experimenting in real life (even though that will give me the best answer, rather than performing for popularity online) because my mom (badass bitch divorced that mofo hehehee) doesn’t know what I’ve gone through and is somewhat invalidating, and I don’t want to do anything too permanent.

What are your guys’ thoughts?

FAQ’s: Yes I am getting a therapist, just wanted input from here too. Yes I know I’m supposed to come out of the closet since it’s June, don’t wanna do it w/o therapist approval. No, I am not happy being cis. The pandora’s box of gender has been opened and cannot be closed. I am trans in some way or some form. Please don’t push God on me, He is not someone I follow. Yes, the psychiatrist thinks I’m autistic, will be getting a formal evaluation in July. No, will not be identifying as autistic until I get a good answer. Goodbye.