Nonbinary

CW: Self hatred, mentions of body mutilation, body and gender dysphoria

I think I want to transition.

I haven't considered myself a man nor woman for a long time now. Years, but... It's never been something I have talked about, or felt the need to explain in detail. It was an internal decision, that once I came to allieviated so much angst that I didn't really need to do much else. I began to dress different, but to everyone around me I still seemed the same.

I was assigned female at birth, and my feminine anatomy does not cause me anguish, at least not now - in my adulthood. I enjoy my breasts, my hips, my legs, the curve of my face, the vulva that decided it all. However, I so greatly want to envelope myself in an alternate reality where I have a flat chest, a straight figure, a more rugged face with a stronger jaw, perhaps even a penis.

I cannot go to that reality easily, not without lots of surgeries and relearned behaviors. The distress of learning how to become feminine was exhausting, so many hours staring at my figure, obsessing over every shape. I was like many young girls, taught that fat was bad and thin was good. I think that was a source to begin looking, but then I tumbled down a rabbit hole of feeling... alien. All the other girls seemed to just "get it" they put clothes on their body and found posture so easily. "How do they do it so easily?" I pondered internally. Their shapes seemed to make sense, mine seemed "wrong" somehow.

This angst reigned over me, I wrongly mistook it all to be because I was overweight. That was the shape that was the most wrong somehow. However even when I was at my most thin - during an illness that cause weight loss - I found the first little trace of comfort because my body finally seemed to look like the other girls who "got it"

But it didn't feel like my body at that point. I felt like a mannequin, but I found comfort in it. I finally felt like I could blend in.

 I would have to tell another story of growing up with a learning disorder to explain why I felt so outcasted, but today is not that day. All I know is that my breasts were "small" until my late teens - about the time I entered college. I gained weight at the same time and the proportions began to feel off again, and then they were suddenly completely a mess. I gained weight so fast, and during a time that I was so busy, that I didn't even notice until I stepped on a scale in the gym. Mirrors were liars. I already saw my shapes as so wrong that when the weight gain hit me I didn't even notice because those shapes were already wrong. But once I had a number to it, I became intensely aware of how my shapes changed. I would press my breasts together and pray for them to blow up like balloons. Worse, I would stare at myself and have vivid fantasies of cutting open my stomach and taking out whatever was stuffing my belly so full. Fat, organs, anything. I wanted rid of it all to have the right shape. I already had this delusion in high school, but the feelings were worsened now. It didn't help that I had no money to update my wardrobe. Everything fit small.

Bras also began to cause so much pain! My mother helped in this venture. We bought new size after new size until I found that only extra large sports bras were the only thing I could wear. They mashed down the shape of my bosom. I felt more confident in T shirts than the dresses I used to wear, because my chest could only be contained by flattening it. There was still pain on my back from any bra, but I was so afriad of my own nipples showing that I didn't venture to go braless for another few years, but shapes changed, and again I was aware of them.

I also fell down another rabbit hole of self hatred. I didn't feel like a good human being, I didn't feel worthy of love or compassion. I saw nothing special about myself. I saw myself as weak and unable - and all those ugly feelings transferred to the mirror. My eyes translated all that ugly onto my face. My face was more like a blob. In my eyes I saw an ugly mutated monster from a sewer.

Then a friend, avant guard in very nature and my introduction into queer and gay identities, hosted a gender reversal party. Everyone was instructed to come gender bent. We had no friends in the group who were trans by identity, it was just a space where everyone could play with the binary by blurring it a bit.

I remember awkwardly wondering into a Goodwill to find affordable mens clothing. Looking over my shoulder, worried someone would ask why I was in the Mens area. "You are not a man." I could hear invisible voices say. I found A shirt that was too small - because I was not used to going up a size for my new body type yet - and a grey pair of pants in the mens section that were the only pair that fit over my hips without making me look like a farmer.

I went to a walgreens to buy bindings, and tied down my breasts. It all felt like so much effort. They still were not completely flat, but it was... a new look. A new shape.

Then came my face. Oh gods, my face. Already I had found a ritual of passing my own mirror and feeling my heart drop out of my chest. My face was disgusting, symbolizing the monster inside of me. It looked... not better, but different as I tried to transform into a man for the night. The blobish nature of my face seemed more... right. Not comfortable, but better because the shapes around it were more complimenting.

It took me an hour to find the courage to leave my dorm room. Looking at my face, the pants I bought that still didn't hide my hips. The fact that I could tell I still had breast tissue.

"You can't change into a man overnight." I had to whisper to myself.

I arrived at the party early, and the gay host looked at me and went, "oh honey, that sure is an attempt, but not good enough. We can do better." And rushed me into the bathroom to draw a mustache and beard on my face.

I went from feeling awkward in my new shapes, to feeling like a cartoon. But the rest of the party arrived in their own genderbent clothes and... the night went on. No one was disgusted by my ghoulish appearance like I was. Drinks and laughs were had, and I remember this event like a window.

I knew I did not want to be a man, but like I mentioned - the anguish and disgust over my body went away when I admitted to myself that I was not a woman. I have a healthy relationship with my body now, and my mind. I no longer see myself as worthless, but full of validity.

In hindsight I can trace back all the self hatred to a mixture of hatred of the womanly expectations thrust upon me and the fear of a fat and ugly body. The latter I dealt with with shaping my relationship with the idea of health - but to feel comfortable with my body in a world of genders, I had to realize I am nonbinary, and the feminine ideal is one I had to subvert to even feel comfortable in. I subvert it by wearing a costume of the feminine every day. I still wear dresses and skirts, and my body has the curves of a body that has been fed estrogen its entire life. But estrogen does not make a woman. Womanhood and Manhood are social constructs, and each has its own identity script that every person within the identity can use and subvert at their leisure. Nonbinaryness is both the effort to find an identity outside of the binary system

But this entire time, I still have been using the script of woman. Not because I felt comfortable in it from the start, but because I learned it and so womanhood became a tool for me to use. I feel like an alien again anytime I become a man. Because I am neither.

However, this has led me to be curious. My whole life has revolved around the estrogen ideal and it just doesn't completely work for me. I want to dabble, I want to play with my shapes now that I love my body. I want to try testosterone, but I do not want to be a man.

Maybe I am romanticizing transitioning, now that I have many friends and acquaintances that have transitioned and are experiencing a full happiness, but honestly I am terrified to change my body. I am happy with my shapes, but there is no way for me to hop into an alternate world where I can have the shapes of a testosterone formed body. Yet, I find myself in a place where I think I need to dabble.

If all that anxiety taught me anything, its that, my body is what I make of it, and is the base layer of my own aesthetic. So, a little experimentation may be in order.