I love this

I wish I could have experienced being a girl going through school. Those years always felt so wasted and lonely. Maybe I’d still be lonely and insecure, but I can’t imagine it’d be as empty or hopeless if I didn’t have a constant sense of wrongness.

I never felt like dating because I hated the idea of making the first move. I always felt out of place with the guys and couldn’t easily understand them. Why couldn’t they just talk about their fucking feelings? Why did there always have to be layers of sarcasm and irony if we were talking in a group? So fucking strange how they saw women as mysterious when they were opaque themselves.

I fucking wish I got to date boys instead of trying to be one. I would probably have still struggled with girl attraction, but at least I understand them more easily as friends. I could enjoy dumb shit like carrying on conversations in the bathroom. When I wasn’t a part of it, I wondered what they talked about. Now that I’ve heard them and talked with my mom from separate stalls, I realize they didn’t talk about anything special. There’s no mystery, it’s just any other menial conversation about life, and yet, it doesn’t seem weird in the slightest to have it while on the toilet. When you gotta talk, you gotta talk.

I’m honestly amazed that I even pieced things together eventually. I had no idea that I would feel better as a girl because I didn’t get to do girly things. My parents are both somewhat nonconforming, so I didn’t think that gender could make such a difference in my life. I guess it still took 5 years, but given that I started from not having the faintest clue, I remain impressed.