Coming Out and Authenticity (The hardest task I've been faced with)

[ElleMg]

The hardest day of my life as a child was in 2009. I told a friend I thought I was gay through instant messaging at the age of twelve. People had saw the signs and joked about my sexuality before I started puberty, so when my best friend asked, I felt free to be honest. The step away from conformity into authenticity felt like a weight off my shoulders as I've always got a kick from being a non-conformist.

Some time passed when I heard the ping of a social media notification. I felt nonchalantly calmness, kinda forgetting my confession, which quickly evaporated as I felt like the world fell from below me. I had 80 notifications, from friends and family alike. I pressed my computer mouse and there I saw it, a screenshot of my concealed confession exposed to the world. Not just that, but my 'best friend' was tagging as many people as he could.

I wanted the ground to swallow me up and take away the feelings crushing my hope and creating a void within me. Then my mum, raised Catholic, came in the room balling her eyes out and telling me to tell her it's not true. "FML" I thought. I knew the world was a painful place but never expected someone to hurt me so viciously, and that was two years into being bullied through school for most aspects of my physical appearance.

We never spoke about my sexuality, and at 16 I ran away for a while with a boyfriend citing my parent's rejection of me. They were kinder and softer from then, but becoming an adult I was faced with this whole added pressure to conform to the system's ideas and expectations. I couldn't conform to gender stereotypes, and although with business and life going well I didn't need to, the roadmap for the 'better' reality I could and almost should take part in bypassed my rationality. It is no coincidence I started transitioning in 2016 and 2017, the peak of the gender madness we exist alongside.

Without expanding on the cult analysis (Cult expert Dr. Stephen Hassan is a better reference), the groundwork had been done between 2008-2016 through social media to put beliefs into my mind about which gender is better, the flexibility of gender, the abstractness of gender, etc. I accept that I'm responsible for accepting them, though.

At first I benefitted from the identity. I felt more attractive en femme (which I now realise I could've enjoyed anyway) and got a lot more male attention which made me feel less lonely. I got opportunities I wouldn't have got otherwise from companies with strong liberal views. My personal brand grew from 100,000 to 120,000 followers on social media as more people shared my posts to 'show support' or virtue signal.

The novelty wore off quickly, and after I sold my business (unrelated to my personal brand or identity) I didn't know what but realised something was missing stopping me from succeeding. Now I know, my passion, my soul. A mentor said to me 'it's like your authentic identity is rowing in one boat, and the image of yourself in your mind is rowing another, and you need those two boats to converge to get where you want and unlock your true potential'.

Several months after he told me that, I found a community of people who were like me. Realising gender isn't real, only sex, and personal (some say 'gender') expression and how you choose to present yourself in line with cultural sex expectations, opened my mind. I was heartbroken to learn how the main victims are young females (under 25), many who end up infertile and some going through with mastectomies before they were even adults. I saw that there were many frequent connections between us. One of the most jarring - at least 70% of us had the experience of realising we've been sold a lie on gender at 24 or 25. I was 24 when I stopped taking my medication last November.

Within a month, out of nowhere I started having spiritual insights I hadn't for years. Growing up isolated and being bullied for several years, I had learnt to utilise a strong personal philosophy and be in touch with my self deeply enough to realise I am not what all these people told me for years I am (ugly, gay, dumb, worthless, etc.). I began getting to know my self again. I learnt of the cult-like ideas that made my brain stop in it's tracks when my ex questioned my gender/sex - I basically shut down - were wrong. My detransition or disbelief of gender, especially the new gender theory, didn't make me an evil or isolated person. Instead, being radically honest with myself had me feeling more myself than I have in years.

I came out to a couple of friends almost immediately, and they were accepting. I came out to a few more after five months or so. Overall though I was still 'pretending to be trans' or pretending to be female in most situations. Another mentor pointed out that one of the things I hated most, even during the good times of transitioning, was the feeling that I was acting, but that by not telling the people I knew the truth, and still changing my behaviour to match gender(sex)-expectations in public/with strangers, I was/am essentially in the same situation of a constant performance.

That was in August. Since then I've been working towards changes. It's not enough to internally accept myself as male, I need to live my truth. I need to tell people I know and care about I'm not trans, and I need to be myself rather than worrying about what stranger's think. Truthfully I'm terrified of the last few people I need to tell. Abandoning my personal brand was easy, as I'm good at detachment, but now I feel like I have ideas worth sharing I feel it'd be worth reopening, or just restarting, my social media accounts. I know I'll get hate but I also feel it'd be incredibly freeing.

My boyfriend isn't into males except me, and just doesn't want to talk about it when I try discuss what I'm going through. My family are another toughy. Especially as, though quietly unapproving of my sexuality and non-conforming identity when I was outted, they were overwhelmingly positive when I came out as trans several years later. I hate the feeling that I've lied to people, even though "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."

I'm still not sure what my future as an entrepreneur holds, but I know the reason I've been struggling for too long. I wasn't focused on what I could create, my focus was who I would be when I was doing the creation. If I can't accept myself in my flamboyance, femininity, and fearlessness, I don't get to enjoy the fruits of my creativity, intuition, and focus. The solution is that I need to be myself, accept who I am, and return home to my soul.

Thanks for reading, this is my first time being this authentic with so many people, so far

 

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[Primeperiwinkle]

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