I've been considering making a thread on this for a while, but I'm not sure I have the confidence nor the energy to battle through some of the inevitable bigotry the thread would generate.
I'm non-binary, I was male at birth. My entire life I've struggled with this, never feeling either male or female enough to identify as either. During my teenage years I struggled with this a great deal. I was part of the boys club so I was privy to the conversations there, and it was clear that had I expressed my feelings I would have been ridiculed and actively alienated. So, in my fear of being discovered, I sometimes over compensated with negative male behaviours in order to be seen as "one of the boys".
This led to feelings of self-loathing, and the installing of a variety of toxic behaviour patterns over time that I'm only now feeling as if I have the capacity to work through and un-pick.
It's become very apparent to me in the last couple of years that there I still have a lot of these toxic aspects installed, during conversations surrounding women's rights and issues, for example, I've seen myself express some questionable "male" opinions that, upon reflection later, are the exact kind of behaviours I engaged in to fit in.
So now I seem to have two battles, the first being my internal one where I need to confront my own behaviours, and the second attempting to express to my friends and family how I feel and how I wish to be identified.
The former is messy, and very humbling, especially as I realize just how much toxicity I still have a hold of. And it's almost as if I cling to some of it in desperation, it's very troubling at times.
The latter is actually terrifying. While many of my friends and family have always commented on the fact I appear more feminine than male (I've had comments regarding this all my life) so in a way the foundation has been laid and my coming out as it were wouldn't be much of a surprise, I've also heard many of my family and friends express opinions such as "this gender conversation is a bit ridiculous, it seems people are inventing identities just to try to be unique", and similar. I've expressed my wishes to the friends I know are accepting of this and they have been wonderful, but I've yet to approach my family or even update my main social media accounts to reflect these things out of fear of ridicule... and that fear, again, leads to a kind of self-loathing because I feel I'm not being true to myself, that I'm a coward.
My sister is lesbian, and she overtly believes bi-sexual people aren't actually bi and need to "make up their minds" (I'm bi-sexual too, so this is a double battle with her specifically), and I know for sure if I had a conversations about this she'd be ridiculing me both to my face and behind my back, and it's the kind of ridicule that would add to my own fears and the noise in my head.
There's already a voice in my head telling me "why can't you be normal?" that's grown louder over the years, and there's a fear that presenting myself fully as a non-binary person would open myself to so much critique that that voice would become dominant.
I'm feeling quite alienated right now, and I have conversations with myself where I catch myself thinking I should just suppress all of this and just call myself male so I don't have to confront it all... but that makes me miserable, as it's not who I am.
I don't know what I'm expecting from sharing this, but if anyone has any feedback based on their own experiences I would love to read it.
