Atlas Ez Poetry

People are people, and people change. This is by far one of the greatest universal truths I have come across.

Hi, I’m Ezra, I’m figuring things out gender and sexuality wise right now, and I’m trying to come to terms with a lot of realizations that I only sort of knew before now. Join me on this journey of self-discovery as I puzzle through things like these revelations (gender edition).

Realization One I was hyper feminized most of the time from the time I was born. I remember very little of my childhood, and most of what I say in any given post is an educated guess at best and like fan crack speculation in fandoms normally is at worst, so jot that down. However, I remember feeling vastly different from other people of my age and general area. Especially some of the girls. Puberty, albeit very early in comparison to some of my peers (age 9 compared to 12-13 for a lot of others), was a tipping point: the forced femininity and acting like a lady went up and the allowance to end up like I ended up being anyways went down.

 By thirteen I was heavily depressed not only realizing that the forced femininity was probably permanent but also everything that I hated about my body and myself (my voice) from what had developed to what had stayed the same was definitely permanent at least where I was. It felt like crushing weights like sometimes it felt hard to breathe, and I didn’t know what to do. Even when I ended up talking to someone about it, they would just say you’re depressed. No one who’s depressed likes that about themselves. Then, eventually, they said it’s because you’re autistic. Of course, you feel different. Sometimes people still say that last one because they think it helps. Maybe partially it does, but not completely. The depression came from somewhere  like autism + something else, so it says my gut feeling here. Autism by itself  or even alongside everything  else like my attraction to women/girls also wouldn’t make me feel so different that it was impossible to blend/hide/mask/ whatever  I was there. I should know that part of my coming out process for my sexual/romantic identity was accepting that I wasn’t ever gonna be normal anyways, so why bother hiding it for the sake of normalcy.

Unfortunately, that put me in more trouble than it was worth with a lot of people, but that’s a story for another day. Since that (being as open as I knew how to be) didn’t work, I turned to the good old-fashioned method of denial. You know how you see reddit’s “Egg IRL” and wonder how those people can deny so hard and still not know. That, I was 100% that.  Like I was so practiced at saying the words still cis though years before I even found out about a subreddit for people who might or might not be trans saying that thing . Though I obviously didn’t use that exact wording. 

Then, eventually finally 2 years after my mom mentioned  it, apparently, I came out as nonbinary because I felt androgynous not realizing or even caring about gender≠ presentation. Still, even this came out of the realization that I no longer could feel afraid because that would give those who would try to erase me even more of the power to do so.  I had started feeling inherently different both less than a year before and for ages before that. But now I could put words to that without fear and let a small part of my near constant anxiety go. Let the fear of being more different, difficult, or out there go. I let myself try to discover what that meant for me. Eventually, I started identifying as a trans man instead, and for a little while, that made me feel a little bit more peaceful.

However, now, even that word alone doesn’t really feel like it fits so tentatively. I’m once again trying out a new label. Except this one’s pretty much just between me and whoever ends up reading this because my family doesn’t want me changing again, so “quickly.” Quotation marks because seriously, you think if you didn’t have the time I had on my hands, you wouldn’t question everything, especially yourself. Anyways I am currently trying out a mixture sort of label Genderqueer Trans Man/ transmasculine individual. Mainly cause I feel like a man a little bit to the left but also nonbinary and not a woman at all but not afraid to be feminine. Do I know if it fits, no that’s the point of trying it, do I know that it’s not ever going to be perfect yeah obviously, do I realize that these labels seem contradictory to some, hell they seem weird to be but they might fit, and that’s good enough for me to at least try. So, with that, this is Ezra, your favorite genderqueer trans man/transmasculine individual signing off.