Erase

I feel like a ghost, or some similar phantom-like entity that has no physical component. I feel as though I don't exist.

Part of this is a coping mechanism. If I ignore my body, I can pretend I wasn't sexually assaulted a year ago. I don't want to pretend or ignore what happened, but apparently I don't have full control over my brain. Terrifying.

Another element of this ghosthood is my gender. I exist in spaces and I feel invisible. Every time someone calls me "she," it feels like they just walked through my transparency. When I die, invariably someone will tell the tombstone engravers, "She--" and it will be carved for eternity. I joke that I'm a cryptid, but in every joke there's a grain of truth. I struggle with the idea that people feel my presence as so feminine that they can't change the way they gender me. I don't feel my presence as feminine at all. Is it me who's wrong? I don't know how much explanation people need or want when I say, "I'm nonbinary, my pronouns are they/them," and often I don't have the energy for any explanation, so I don't say anything. So then everyone genders me woman until I ask them not to, and most of the time I have to ask over ten times before they listen, and the Lego bricks of microaggressions stack up and stack up until they're taller than the Sears Tower and they're crushing my lungs.

At this point I've lost count of the number of times I've written or said "it isn't my body that's wrong, it's the way you gender it." Other trans people erase me from the page by saying "dysphoria" when they mean "body dysphoria." Apart from my desire never to become pregnant (so, egg removal or uterus removal), I don't want to change my body, and so my dysphoria is almost entirely social dysphoria. Implying that the only kind of gender dysphoria that exists is the kind where the body and mind don't match is implying that I'm not real, I'm not trans, I'm not me. I've spent 22 years learning to love my body only to have it taken away from me by my own fucking brain.

I don't know how to break this thought loop. Loop. I don't know how to convince my brain that I am real, that I matter. I need to hear that I am not an inconvenience, that asking not to be misgendered is not rude or unreasonable, but if someone tells me that after I ask them to, then it doesn't count, because I asked them to. It doesn't feel real. I'm not real. But if I'm not real, then why does it hurt so much?

I also think that feeling like a ghost is a coping mechanism for being misgendered. If I don't have a body, then people can't see me as a woman. If I'm invisible, then it hurts less when I'm ignored. (That last part isn't true.)

My curves are not feminine. My lipstick is not feminine. My ankle boots are not feminine, and the pants I wear that I bought in the men's section are not masculine. I am neither. If the gender spectrum is the Milky Way galaxy, then my gender is the space between that and the next closest galaxy. If you see me as feminine, that's your issue. I reject your assumptions. My physicality is not limited to my reproductive function. I am solid. I am real. I am here and I am queer and I feel exhaustion through my entire body but at least I have one, no matter what my brain says.