Shadow Wood Press

Anonymous asked: WOW @ tumblrdatinggame(.)com WTF is this.. my little brother's roommate is on this and I think I saw you too lol

…..Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I got all excited over something in my inbox. And it’s spam. *sighs*

Losing myself?

Sometimes I feel like I am losing my sense of gender. Or discounting it.

I’ve settled into intersexed. Bigendered. Whatever you want to call it. But that seems like almost a cop out. Like I’m not choosing after all. Like I gave up trying to figure it out. It’s a blanket term and I don’t think it fits as well as I wish it did.

Being bisexual doesn’t help. Doesn’t give me some kind of basis for how to feel. Sometimes, I wish I was straight and then I realize I don’t know if that means I wish I only liked women or only men because my sense of gender is so completely fucked over, convoluted, and confused that I don’t have any idea what I actually want. Or what anything actually means.

I feel like I’m settling on intersexed because I’m too tired of wondering. But even that isn’t making things easier. I can accept that I have both feminine and masculine behaviors. That isn’t hard. Same for my hobbies. I’m cool with that. But I’m not really all that cool with deciding I must be both then. It doesn’t feel right. It might just be growing up in two sided world or just me, but I can’t be both. There should be a clean, simple answer and I can’t find one. Am I a man or am I a woman? Am I a feminine man or a masculine woman? Am I gay? Am I straight? Why does that matter so much to me? Why couldn’t my genitals give me some kind of definite answer I could accept?

Or am I just rejecting the physical because I can?

Or do I want to accept it because I’m sleeping with a man and it would be normal?

Or am I just fucked?

A year ago, I was planning for hormone therapy and top surgery. I had no doubts. I was ready. The only delay was so that I could have children before treatments took my ability to procreate. I’d come out to my family. I was ready to begin my real life trial run as a man. I was seeing a doctor and accepting myself as a troubled but content man instead of the bundle of nerves and self hatred I had been. I was ready.

And now I’m not anymore. I can’t seem to decide on anything. I tried to blame it on hormones before, since I’m at the right age for them to be both settling and surging with baby-making intentions, getting insistent because I’m 25 and still haven’t had a child. Because I’m having regular sex, which is boosting my estrogen levels. But it’s not just that.

I’m faltering. I lose my center. I’m coming to the realization that if I have children with him, I’m going to be a mother. Not a father. It shouldn’t be shocking, but it hit me like a sucker punch, right in the gut. See, words are important. They mean things and some of them have a shit ton of feeling behind them. I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to some kid calling me Dad. Dad is different than Mom. You go to Mom when you get hurt because she’ll kiss it better and pet your hair until you’re done crying and then give you a cookie before she sends you back out to play. Dad helps you build the doghouse and teaches you about poison ivy and tells you it’s okay to fight back because you should never have to be afraid of someone else.

You can talk to me about gender roles and societal pressures all you want, how it’s all in our heads and our perceptions, and concepts like this are why women are oppressed and men overcompensate for their “femme” inner thoughts. I don’t care. That is what those words mean to me. It’s why I have such a problem calling my father Dad because there is so much baggage there. It’s why I’ll talk to Mom about my feelings but I don’t expect her to save me from them.

Gender, to be honest, should be easy. But it’s not. And my attempts to normalize, to accept, are not helping me figure out what’s right for me. I can’t stay stagnant just because not being so is scary or hard. I’ve got the time to figure things out, so I need to.

I need to figure myself out.