So this is going to sound pretty weird and uneventful on the basis of the last two years or so, but as indicated yesterday I guess I’ve figured out for sure that I’m a girl here. Like, non-binary always. but also, I’m not just trying on femininity like it’s a costume or a phase. This is me. Me: girl.

At least, of some sort.

Which I have been saying, sort of loosely and semi-fatuously for months now. I guess I’ve been trying it on existentially ever since that six-month mark with the HRT, where whee, this all hit hard and I began this psychological hand-over from my predecessor to the person I am now, the person they’d been protecting all these years. But I’ve been a little tentative and insecure in just declaring these things.

It’s like. I’ve been holding onto the idea for so long, not fully believing it could be true but leaning over, claiming some aspects of my own femininity. Tacking these lost pieces onto my new self, to try to give her form. I mostly use she/her for my own purposes. I keep saying “girl” as a handwave generalization for my whole thing. But it kind of felt like, who am I to decide these things? Even after years of transness, nearly a year of medical transition, psychologically it was so hard to stick that landing.

But, no. I’m not just a femme-leaning enby. Though yes, I am that. I’m also genuinely some kind of a girl. It’s clear to me now. After saying it informally for so long, almost making a joke out of it, finally it clicked. There’s a reason this feels so right to me, makes this much sense. It’s because it’s not a joke. It’s not me being cute with gender. It’s actually true.

I guess I’ve just been really slow to accept the obvious, even after recognizing that this is the only thing that’s ever really made sense to me, ever really made me happy in 42 years. That all this glow isn’t just from, like, superficial enjoyment. It’s because it was right.

Gender’s all made-up nonsense, right, except in the meaning we give it. And, this is meaningful to me as it turns out.

So, I’m a real-actual girl.

Because of course I am, Christ. This isn’t some major revelation, except in that the last part of me finally went, “Oh. Okay, sure.”

So that is, I guess, a subtle reorientation of my perspective on things.

Nothing changes externally. Still non-binary. Still femme. Still aroace, and pan with all the tertiary junk. Still autistic. Still wrangling with ADHD. Still gorgeous. Still Azure. Just me resolving a few things, going back and dotting a few stray umlauts.

Copy editing my gender, as it were.