I just don’t think I’m a boy
I’m not a girl, I think maybe sometimes I just get confused
It’s hard to tell the difference between wanting and wanting to be
The two different desires
Because you can want two things at once
I guess I must be genderfluid but I don’t know
I have never been a girl
But that hurts my heart as well as it lifts it up
And I get scared that I’m not even attracted to girls and that all of that fuss was over nothing
And that I am a girl
That I had nothing to fear all along and was just making it up
But it’s not true
I just don’t yearn for girls the way I yearn for boys
Sometimes I do
But I appreciate the way boys are in a different way
Well, the same way
But there’s always that longing
And that pang of missed opportunity
That discomfort and wrongness
And I should have figured it out by now
Which skin to settle in
But I’m a shapeshifter who never shifts their skin
Who lets the urge to change squirm around inside them
Letting themself convulse and double over with the strain rather than just give themself what they want
I was born a girl of the new millennium
And I see her sometimes, in my reflection, but never in the flesh
And she’s strong and happy and a woman deserving of that title
And she’s just like me
And she’s nothing like me
She’s in green velvet and her name means daughter of Ireland. She’s a warrior queen and she beams through her filthy face, skin stained with woad and dirt and blood
And I want and don’t want at the same time
I want that certainty
And to know my own name
To have it roll off my tongue in a comfortable drawl
To know
Because I wish I was a boy sometimes
I think I almost always wish I was a boy
I sort of think I always have
Just not in the way I expected
Not in a way where I despised being a girl
Because even as a young misogynist
I crossed my arms and decreed that girls were better than boys
Girls don’t have to wear dresses or like pink or have crushes or be weak
Girls can be anything they want
I just don’t know that I really thought that applied to me
I wasn’t like other girls
Even after I read Caitlin Moran and spent my evenings on Tumblr
Even when I listened to riot grrrl and hung out with grubby wild women who painted themselves with blood and howled alanis morrisette at the moon
Because the sometimes lipstick wearing but unshaven strident feminist pink loving daughter of Sappho still wasn’t like other girls
And she so wanted to be
Even though she already knew why she never would be
But maybe if she just tried
If she just tuned out the things she didn’t want to hear
It wouldn’t matter
Because I loved being a girl. I loved the sisterhood and the raging and cursing and being allowed to be lupine and strange and feral and and worshiping Courtney Love at a crushed velvet altar
But I couldn’t wear a funny t shirt with fried eggs over the nipples, or join in laughing about hating having to wear a bra, or look in the mirror
All that sisterhood gets a little stifling
No matter how much you try to join in
To be proud of every wart of your womanhood
Because In the back of your mind you remember that soul crushing life destroying feeling of getting your first period
Viscous maroon liquid dripping down your 13 year old thighs and a stale sweet scent like death
“Its only a couple teaspoon of blood”
Maybe it is for everyone else
But you’re a bluebottle trapped in a jar of honey
It’s not blood
It’s tar
Being 12 and your sister gently advising you to maybe think about getting a bra
Wanting to smash in your bedroom mirror when you realised she was right
And realising that your life was over
And you hang out with your brother and despite everything, it feels like you can breathe again
Jeans and t shirts and no talk about freeing the nipple or menstrual blood or girl code
Just existing
And feeling awful for feeling that way
It’s just internalised misogyny
That’s all it is
You dress like your brother and hoard photographs of your father in the 70s in a box next to your bed
And you feel light
And you wish it was always like this
But then
“This is my sister”
“Then go do it girl!”
You’re not the same
Why can’t we just be the same
Does this mean I’m a boy
It’s the thing I always come back to
But that doesn’t have to mean that it’s true
I don’t think that it’s true
I mean in a way, it would be easier if it were true
But so much harder for all the reasons you don’t want it to be
I’ll never be a boy
But I don’t know if I’ll always be not a boy
When I think of androgyny I just picture a boy
Not a man with a six pack and a wife and a job and 2.5 children
Not a man with a capital M whose name is Richard and who likes football and Family Guy
But I think of a boyish figure who skateboards or boxes and who likes to thrash around to punk and cry in a ball on their bed listening to sufjan stevens
I think I just picture who i’d like to be
I wish I’d been born a cis boy
Well not a cis boy
I’d still be trans
I think
But it would be easier
I could date boys and know that they saw me as being like them
And I could still buy a dress or a skirt
Except I wouldn’t have to worry what parts of me were showing
And I could do what I liked with my hair
I know amab people get a lot of grief
But I’d take it if it meant I wouldn’t have to be this
I’d grow a fucking penis if it meant not having to deal with all this
And I do not care for penises at all