I've never 100% felt properly "male." Even as, like, a pre-puberty kid in elementary school, I said I wish I had been a "goy" (girl/boy), and when people of course snickered and were like, "Wait, what do you mean by that and are you joking or not?," it didn't take me long to realize at lightspeed that that feeling was the sort of thing I shouldn't blurt out to absolutely everyone and should bottle up unless I wanted endless harassment and bullying that went beyond what I already had to endure. Plenty of other things, like growing my hair long, wearing pants (ALWAYS pants) and baggy shirts to cover my figure as much as I could. And of course, it was much more than just aesthetic things like that. In relationships and in bed, I never could visualize or put myself into the role of "the man." I'm pretty sure I'd hate having to ever raise a kid and take care of a pregnant wife, for example. When I'm with someone, I only like it insofar as I like the idea of them enjoying themselves, I have basically no interest in what I'm getting out of it; when I look at adult content, I'm thinking, "They look hot, I'd like to see X happen to them," but not necessarily, "I want to do X to them." To me, these are very important details, because while some could just be explained as me not fitting into my personal society's cultural norms, the other things are not things that are taught to a person - I was not taught to essentially disassociate myself romantically and sexual from the gender roles I was born to take on.

I went through a period of seeing if I felt better female. Started going by a different name (which was gender neutral to begin with, looking back on it). But, like voting for Republicans or Democrats, I just assumed I only had two options at the time.

Well, eventually played this visual novel that had a non-binary main character, then got so into it I wrote a fanfic about it. Started realizing I was feeling a little too much, you know, getting too into it, too invested, for this to be... normal. I just sort of realized that everything I had experienced and felt since being a kid more-or-less matched the main character. And, so... yeah, here I am, I guess.

It's nice to know what the word is for what I am. Not sure it really changes a huge amount in my life, but it's some minor mental peace. All I plan to do is wear a fairly discreet nb pin on my shirt for now, and go by different pronouns and name with my friends. Kind of... I don't know what else to say. It's just not that big of a deal, but it is? It's not like I haven't always been this anyways, so nothing's new.