Diary of a Non-Binary

Part Thirteen

    I've been spelling my name with one less "n" than my actual name, that way people recognize it's a guy's name first instead of it being a girl's name spelled RyAnn or some shit. 

    One of my friends says she's trans now. I honestly don't think it's a big deal, but a bunch of my other friends think she's only doing it because she wants to copy what I did. I've already come out and all of them make an effort to use the right pronouns, but then when she does everyone thinks she's just lying to get attention. I don't know whether it's real or not, but she can do whatever she wants and if she wants to use female pronouns then everyone should use female pronouns, if she someday wants to use male pronouns again then everyone should use male pronouns again. It's not that hard to just switch a few words in your vocabulary, so it shouldn't be such a big deal. 

*sitting in class*

"Why do you keep making tally marks on your hand?" Skylar asked me.

"Because," I said

"Because why?"

"Why not?"

Skylar turned around "Do you know why she puts tally marks on her hand?" she asked the person behind us. 

Two more marks. I kept my marker out in case of any more mistakes. I wrote on the inside of my hand 'Je suis un garcon'

"What did you just write on your hand now?" I let her see it, "I.. am... a... boy? But you're a girl..."

"But I'm not actually." I told her.

"Oh, so you call yourself a boy now?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, ok, I guess that works and, like,  your name is gender-neutral and everything too."

"Yeah, it's cool, I suppose."

I understand that I'm not alone. I understand that things like this effect people every single day. I'm nothing extremely unique. There's always someone who can tell me what has happened to them that will make me feel like my problems aren't real and I'm just complaining. But to me, by myself, it's all so real. If I'm left alone with my thoughts there are some awful thoughts that come up in my head. I've been told by my mom that this is too confusing for her to even try, and it is confusing. It's confusing to me why I'm the one who has to go through this "fake" dysphoria every day. I've been told by my dad that he's read an article online that says that people don't fully mature until they're 25 years old. He says it'll change back, and maybe it will, but maybe it won't. Maybe I'll be stuck in this limbo of emotions for ten more years until he finally decides to think about taking me seriously. Maybe this is just too much for me right now. Maybe I'm too young to know who I really am. Maybe I'm not. I could just be too mature for my age and I've figured it out before anyone else. Maybe I'm just too old, that if this were real I would have acted this way from the day I was born. Maybe I did. This is all so jumbled in my head I can't even tell if I ever thought of myself as a girl, if I ever said "I'm a girl" and meant it. If I've ever looked in the mirror at 7 or 8 and thought "Is this my body?". Maybe I didn't. Maybe I did.