My whole journey with gender has been confusing and, honestly, exhausting. I was born female, but I never felt like I fit into what people expected from a girl or a woman. A lot of my discomfort started with my body. I hated having breasts; they felt foreign and wrong on me, like they weren't supposed to be there. I’m thin but I have wide hips and a proportionally larger butt, which made me feel even more uncomfortable and disconnected from my own body. It’s like I was looking at someone else. I also really disliked the way I looked in traditionally feminine clothing like dresses or crop tops; it just never felt like me.

A big part of my story is that I'm autistic. I don't think I have a very good innate understanding of what gender is supposed to feel like. To me, both being a woman and being a man feel performative, like a set of stereotypes based on appearance and behavior that are linked to what genitalia you have. Womanhood always felt like a much more difficult and unnatural performance for me to put on.

I spent a lot of time online and in communities where transitioning was discussed. I started to think that maybe I was a man, because I naturally acted more in ways that are expected from men and I preferred when people referred to me as one. I liked the idea of having a flat chest and being seen as male. I even started binding my chest. But a constant, nagging feeling followed me: I felt like a fraud. I knew I wasn't a real man, just a female with a chest binder, and that made me feel like I was tricking people, especially gay men I was attracted to. I'm bisexual, but I hated when men saw me as a woman, so I preferred dating gay men. This came with its own guilt, feeling like a trap and worrying that they shouldn't be attracted to someone like me.

My mental health has always been a struggle. I have depression and severe anxiety. I was on different medications—first Abilify, which never worked, and then Luvox. The Luvox was also related to symptoms of OCD that I was told I had, though I was never officially diagnosed. At first, the medication helped, but as my depression got worse, I needed higher doses. Eventually, they made me feel kind of manic; I felt great in a reckless way, like nothing mattered and my actions had no consequences. I became an asshole to everyone, which wasn't me, so I stopped taking them.

All of this led me to a point where I was trying to force a transition that deep down felt inauthentic. I realized I was putting immense effort into "faking" being a man, trying to pass and be stealth, and it was draining. I decided to try and step back from labels altogether. I stopped trying to identify as a man or a woman and just tried to be me, without the performance. It’s been a process of trying to stop caring so much about how I'm perceived and to just exist.

I don't know if I have any regrets, because exploring this was part of figuring myself out. But I do regret the mental anguish and the time I spent feeling like a fraud. I don't regret transitioning socially in the sense that it helped me understand what doesn't fit. I benefited from pulling back from that mindset. I still don't like my breasts or my hips, and I still feel disconnected from my body, but I'm trying to find peace with it without attaching a strict label to my discomfort. I just wish I had been born a man, but I wasn't, and I'm learning to live with that.