boys will be boys, and yes, that’s the problem.

i was supposed to be girl and i suppose for a while, i succeeded, or maybe i was unable to recognize failure—chalked bullying from girl-classmates up to jealousy and continued on my alt little way, hair too rattled by humidity. clothing too dark, skulls screenprinted onto shoes too menacing. there is no one way to woman, but my way wasn’t one of them.

queer parents aren’t actually more likely to have queer kids—their kids are just more likely to have the language for it. i love my parents, but they’re straight, and so were everyone else’s. what i mean by that is there was no word for kind of boy, kind of girl, but really, nothing. no desire to assimilate. not in my periphery, at least.

and what i mean by the problem is that by the time i did learn the words non-binary, agender, queer (as in gay and not weird), the boys had been just as brutal as the girls. they were all at the front of the line when god handed out emotionally abusive tendencies. and in my experience, the not like other girls and secretly transmasculine venn diagram is a circle—but also, how could i possibly be a man when these were the role models i was bestowed?

i remember, while wading shallow into a gender transition i didn’t know i’d started, meeting a man who told me he usually dated women more feminine than me. if you scroll back through my instagram, you can tell roughly when that happened—i slowly detransition until i am an influencer, posing in shein co-ords on my front porch during covid lockdown. backwards ballcap kind of boy gives way to matte lipstick kind of girl; i start painting my nails again. everything becomes predictable.

but i am not half girl. i am not half boy. i am all void, perhaps storage space for the flashbacks. as they subside, more queerness takes their place. i am my closest to whole.