I'm just a painting that's still wet.....

So, yeah now you know.... sorta, kinda.  It is very hard to really explain how it feels to know you are different, and not really have the ability to express it others.  Why can't I express it to you clearly?  Because I have no experience as anything else than what I am, and you only have experience as to what you are.  

I have been told, "What's the big deal? You're just a tom boy."  Umm, no tis so much more than the enjoyment of participating in masculine activities.  It isn't a physical expression, but a mental one.

"That's just weird!"  Sigh.  That one?  Yeah, that one hurts, quite sharply actually. Don't you think I know it's weird to not be any one gender?  To know that I don't 'fit' in?  And, to know that I'll always feel some sense of alienation by people of the same sex as my self?

To clear things up, here is a handy way of looking at the difference between sex and gender.  Sex? Basically it's what's between your legs.  And gender?  It's what's between your ears.

Technically?  I am a transgendered person.  This is what wikipedia has to say about transgender. "It's a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles.  It's the state of one's 'gender identity'.  A self-identification as woman, man or neither."  Does that mean that I chose this gender identity?  No, what it means is that for some reason, people like me don't take our gender identities from our sex.

How long have I felt this way?  As long as I can remember..... I don't ever remember looking at any female, ever and thinking that I wanted to look like or to be like them.  It was always males that I wanted to look like, act like, to be.  Tough, cool, and oozing maleness....

It has always..... pinched, itched, didn't fit/feel right to be identified as female/woman..... never been comfortable marking that box.  Chick is about the only female word that I am comfortable with.  Do I use she?  Yeah, am cool with she, her, etc.

Until a short time ago, I had never met anyone who was like me, at least not knowingly.  And finding this new friend has allowed me to talk to someone who truly understands what I feel.  And he has been educating me, holding my hand and helping me come to terms with it.  What his friendship has meant to me, is beyond words.  I'm not sure that I have ever met a sweeter kinder gentler person, ever.  There isn't enough words to ever express what he means to me.  My kk lol ;-p  friend.

For years, I just let it lay in me, occasionally it would bubble up to the surface and I would feel so....... stifled by my sex and without an outlet for my gender, it would lead to bouts of short temper and depression, and tears.

Does T.H. know?  Yeah, he does.  Understand?  Not really, but how can he?  When I would be upset and rather manic about it, his only response, which didn't help at the time, but was the only way he knew how to 'fix' it was to tell me over and over that he loves me just as I am, and wouldn't change anything about me, and that he loves, loves, loves me.  And how much more can I want?  Nothing.

This post title?  It's a lyric from the song "Leave a Scar" by Marilyn Manson.  Why did I choose this as my title?  Because, at some level, I feel unfinished, waiting for some undefinable something...... So, I am still in the process of learning to be me.  Learning what it means to BE me.  Learning, well me.