I hadn’t done the math before, but I think my psychological, emotional problems began at the time I started to regularly get punished for being either too “effeminate,” or insufficiently masculine. Which began in that hell called middle school. It was a cauldron of awfulness. There were lots of other things going on. Home was never a safe place. School… well, it was one of those places where if you spoke up about being tormented, they’d punish you because they wouldn’t have done those things to you for no reason. My one close friend had moved away. But being seen as effeminate, having no interest in macho activities, and having little to no interest in girls — those didn’t combine too well in rural 1990. I just… lost myself in my art, mostly. Illustration, games. One thing after another. I didn’t have anywhere else to turn.

And the autism — it’s not like I would have had a receptive audience even if I spoke the same language as the people around me, but it sure didn’t help. It just seemed like people were behaving randomly. I had no idea what was going on or why.

I never did get the help I needed. The one thing — the only clear thing my parents ever did to help me was to take me out of the local school system. But that wasn’t because of how I was suffering, of course. It was because my grades had plummeted because of… mixed reasons. The main reason is obvious enough, but a major contributing one is that the school never assigned me textbooks. They shrugged and said they were out; I’d have to share a friend’s books to do the schoolwork. I didn’t have any friends, of course. So that didn’t work out so well. That is to say, I did know a few kids, well enough to occasionally spend time with them, but our relationships weren’t… that great. Various degrees of toxic. And they weren’t in the same classes as me, so that didn’t help anyway.

That lack of help… I just, never had anyone. Even to teach me to, like, groom myself on a basic level. My parents were too busy screaming, and seemed to forget that I existed. They wondered what was wrong with me that I didn’t just work autonomously. Already know what to do. But, on top of that, the continued frustration with my lack of masculinity. Lack of sexuality. Lack of… initiative. While I continued to putter away in my dark corner, coping through my oblivion to the world around me. Discovering music, game design, this, that. Doing stuff.

Just about every other living situation that followed was a repeat of the same scenario, if often more specifically abusive. I’ve been sort of… locked away, for most of my life, unable to cope, stumbling from one bad situation into another. People who want to use me, then grow angry I’m not what they expected.

This step of embracing who I am—recognizing my autism, my asexuality, my genderqueerness, and accepting them—it’s, it’s like this flood of emotions, walled away for decades, has all been rushing out. I’m starting to feel like a full, real person. It’s overwhelming. Giddy. It’s too simple to point and say, that right there is the whole problem, but… seriously, this is the first time I’ve ever felt marginally healthy. I don’t know where I’m going with all of this, but that deep self-loathing, it’s… almost gone. Almost. Shocked and withered.

I’m not a woman, but I am very strongly feminine. And… I really, I can’t even put on a convincing pretense of masculinity. It so goes against who I am that I feel sick trying. And… you know, that’s fine. It is what it is. I am who I am. If I work against it, I suffer.

So, I don’t even know what practical effect this may have, but accepting my gender for what it is—there’s so much in this whole thing of, this is my body, my mind, my personality. No one else has a right to any of it, or to tell me that I’m wrong. I am my own person. I am me.

And in that, I feel like I’ve emerged from a forty-year prison sentence. All of this psychological, emotional baggage—it wasn’t mine. It was put on me, as punishment for being wrong. Everyone I ever trusted with my life, hoped they’d accept me, help me, they piled more on.

All that suffering, it isn’t me. It’s not my fault. It doesn’t come from within me.

And… it’s amazing how quickly it evaporates once I actually come to find myself, recognize who I am, and give myself that acceptance I’d always been hoping for.