Genderfluid

Discovering my Gender

I figured I'd write about how I found out I was genderfluid, in case anyone's going through the same thing.

For as long as I can remember, I've always had vague knowledge that there were people who didn't belong to the gender they were assigned. However, this knowledge was extremely limited and I didn't even know the name for this kind of thing, so it all remained a very foreign concept to me.

I don't remember when I first heard the word transgender, but just like that a whole new world of possibilities opened for me. Eventually I started questioning my own gender, and there's a saying I like that says something like "Cis people don't think to question that they're cis". For a really long time I toyed back and forth with the idea that I might be transgender.

I never told anyone about that, until one day my friend told me she was transgender. Her courage was the final push for me, and I decided that with how much I had been questioning my gender, I had to be trans. I already knew that if I was a boy I wanted to be called Thomas, and certainly a cis person wouldn't question their gender to the point of deciding on a name. At the time, I saw that being trans was the only logical possibility. I told my friend who had come out to me that I thought I was trans, and we did our best to support each other.

At the time, I had really limited knowledge on genders. As far as I knew, there were 2 genders, and some people switched their gender.

I began to notice how sporadic my decision to be a boy was. Some days I was all for it, some days I wasn't sure, and some days I was against it. Throughout this experience I did my best to learn about the different genders. And then I saw it. Genderfluid.  Sadly, it didn't click right then and there, and I continued my search.

I found myself constantly going back to the term though, reading more about it and making sure I fully understood it. I wasn't sure about it for a long time, and eventually I decided that it fit. I didn't come out to anyone, and I stopped talking to people about gender identities, completely isolating myself from the topic. It became a touchy subject for me, more than it ever had before.

Before, I figured I wasn't cis, but I knew I wasn't trans. But once I found a term that worked for me, I tried to push it away. I didn't want it. I wanted to the cis girl everyone thought I was, I didn't want to deal with people not understanding, I didn't want to deal with dysphoria (though, big surprise, this worsened my dysphoria).

After a lot of fighting myself, I slowly found myself accepting who I was. I re-came out to my friend, and explained my new name (which I'll talk about in a later chapter). She was really supportive of me, and helped me a lot when I felt dysphoric.

I came out to another one of my friends and we were pretty good friends for a while, but we kind of drifted apart. I didn't come out to anyone else, because I wasn't sure who I felt comfortable telling. I still have that fear, of not being able to come out because I don't want people to treat me like a different person.

And that leads to how I got here. I decided that coming out online to strangers would make it easier to tell my friends. Because logic.

How did you find your gender? Do you have any advice to those still searching?

My advice would be to do as much research as possible, and find a term that really fits who you are.