Could gender BE any more confusing? *exasperated sigh*

Why does gender make no freaking sense to me? I swear - when I try to think about it - my brain powers off and I am left to press (more like impatiently jab at) the power button over and over with no success. Only a dark, blank, screen staring back at me.

I was so sure I was non-binary transmasc* and identified so heavily with that term for months. But the New Year has brought me a massive wave of feminine energy. What does this mean for me now? For my gender, which my identity rests so heavily on?

I can't stand to be in any of the clothes that felt like a home to me when I was deep in my masculine energy. The person I look at in the mirror now feels different than the person I looked in the mirror at a few weeks ago. And no, not because I have grown and learned lessons and all that. Gender wise. I feel different looking in the mirror and being in my skin. So what the heck? I must be genderfluid then. Moving from one side of the gender spectrum to the other... But wait, why is gender a spectrum? It sure can't be a linear spectrum because I sure do not move in a straight line. Or even a non-linear spectrum, because I just keep jumping off of it. I am expanding, evolving constantly. How could I possibly place myself onto a spectrum at any given time when this is expansion is occurring?

Throughout my journey with gender I have learned that I cannot stand feeling restricted in any way. I struggle with this because our society imposes many restrictions upon us in the form of expectations. These feel incredibly suffocating to me. Expectations like how someone who is assigned female at birth (AFAB), like me, is supposed to look and act. Expectations that are constantly being reinforced by influences like the media, or our family members. I just have to remind myself that these expectations were created by humans. People just like you and me. This means that we also have the power to remove these expectations, or at least give them less power over us.

I feel like I am on such a voyage trying to discover what authenticity truly means to me. I have been drowning in all these expectations since I can remember, and I have finally breached the surface and realized there is so much potential for me, so many wonderful things about myself to embrace. It is all about having the courage to seek out what is above the surface. Sometimes it feels like a challenge to find this courage. Sometimes it feels easier to just give in, and perform how people are expecting me to. I am just grateful that sometimes I have it in me to explore the things that scared me before because they went against everything I had ever thought was "right", "acceptable", "good", "attractive"... the list goes on.

I said something along these lines to my therapist the other day, and they threw out the term "gender expansive". It resonated, more than maybe any other term I have appointed in an attempt to categorize my gender identity. I am still figuring out what this term means to me, but all I know is that it makes me feel a sort of freedom that excites me and certainly could lead to many more discoveries.

That's for another day!

<3 mouse fairy

*transmasc (short for transmasculine): an umbrella term for transgender people assigned female at birth who identify most with masculinity