The title is obviously hyperbole as the topic of gender identity is much more complex than that. I did find it to be a little bit funny though :)

I've been hovering in the space of 'not a woman but fuck if I know what else' for most of my late twenties. Nothing felt like it fit and I was too busy with life to think about it further. I also have to confess I had a very narrow view of what being trans looked like and I felt like that view didn't fit me and who I was at the time. I spent my twenties as a very lost person with deep depression and anxiety about the world and myself.

One of the things that started the eventual snowball effect was being diagnosed as AuDHD in my mid-twenties. Suddenly I had explanations for a lot of things and life made a lot more sense. I got on the proper medications and got more hands-on support for things I struggled with in my day-to-day life. I started to heal and find my own way of living that didn't make me feel like I was slowly dying.

But after the neurodivergent fog lifted, so to speak, I felt that something was still fundamentally off. I felt like I was performing womanhood in a way that felt foreign to me. I was good at being a woman, sure, but did I feel like one? Again, fuck if I knew but I had to be something so being a woman it was for me still.

A key moment in my queer awakening happened a few years ago when I was talking with a transmasc friend of mine. I explained to him that my breasts made me feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable (among other things, but that is the part that really stuck with me). That's when I got a word for the thing I'd been feeling for most of my life: dysphoria.

So obviously I then went through a 2.5 year long phase where I dressed and acted hyper-feminine to prove something to myself (lol). What was I trying to prove? Fuck if I know, but it obviously didn't work as things still felt shitty and off. I was starting to reach a breaking point where every feminine action and expression thrust me into a deeper depression. I didn't make the connection at the time, but in hindsight it was obvious: I was deeply in denial.

It was during that time I found my long lost love for books and reading again. I had been vehemently against reading 'silly romance books' my whole life because I wanted to, idk, feel important and pretentious (lol). It did feel like I'd reached a point of 'the world is on fire and nothing matters so I might as well actually enjoy myself' though, and so I picked up my first romance book.

And, guys? Turns out romance is actually a very cool genre. I read a few books here and there before settling on a specific corner of sports romance. I'd realised by that point that I didn't really resonate with straight MCs so I experimented with some lesbian romance. That felt somehow distant, though, so on a whim I picked up a romance novel about two hockey dudes in love.

It was there I found a very weird and new kind of feeling of belonging. I kept teading these books and the more I read them, the more I found myself fascinated by them. I struggled with these thoughts a lot because I'd seen discussion about cis women fetishising gay men and feared I might be one of those people. It didn't feel like that, though. Reading about two stereotypically masculine men falling in love felt peaceful and right somehow. I wasn't looking at them, I was imagining myself as them.

It was during this time I started to have longer and more complex discussions with friends and loved ones about gender identity. These discussions and the revelations found within those conversations were (and continue to be) the backbone of my queer identity and while I won't go over them here because they are deeply personal, I do want to say that a lot of things started to slowly make sense because of them.

And then one day it just kind of clicked. I am a man. Just thinking it made a very deep, tranquil sort of peace fall over me. I'd suspected for a while already but now I knew for sure. And fuck me, that knowledge made me feel like I was floating on air. Like, the mere thought of 'I'm a whole ass dude' made me grin like an absolute idiot. I finally felt like I belonged.

So look. Are the guys in those romance novels fictional and idealised depictions of men and therefore do not reflect the actual nuance and complexity of what being a man is really like? Yup. Did reading about those men open up a new door for me where, for the first time ever, I could explore my gender identity in a safe and private space which in turn gave me the courage to be more open and honest to myself? Also yes.

...yeah. TL;DR: reading books can heal you in unexpected ways. Lol. Anywho, I'm Niko, he/him, and for the first time ever I am excited about life. I see my future and it's fucking bright 🫡 I'm off to read more about those queer sports dudes now but if you've made it this far, I'd like to personally thank you for listening to my rambles about how fucking weird (and hopefully eventually wonderful) life can get when you start actually paying attention to it