It’s been an emotional journey with myself to understand my gender. Growing up I was always told “man up” and was looked down on by my family for not adhering to typical masculine traits. Gender roles in my evangelical cultish household were rigid. Pants for boys, dresses for girls. Colors were also extremely gender coded with little flexibility. Clothing itself was a mechanism for control in my childhood, an authoritarian power struggle to mold their children after their image. I remember as a kid doing many femme things such as shaving my body, practicing tucking, doing a little makeup, and wanting to wear women’s clothes. I didn’t have the words at the time to describe what I was doing. I was extremely in denial with myself and this exploration was suppressed in favor of a hate filled resentment of the world and in particular, gay people.

Now out of that environment and now knowing better, I am constantly filled with a sense of longing. Longing I could go back and do things different. Even telling people I want to wear skirts or other femme things is unfortunately still hard. My masculinity is so engrained into me it’s hard to get outside of it. I still havnt told my partner… but it’s not because I don’t trust them. It’s just that getting the words out vocally is hard.

I don’t want to be in the closet anymore. I didn’t realize how happy I could feel from wearing femme clothes until I tried some on the other week. My heart feels like a kid again. #lgbt #nostrplebs