u/GhostofLove119

Not a trigger warning per se but a heads up: I felt it appropriate to post this here rather than one of the autism/neurodivergence subs just because, while those places are largely welcoming and understanding and full of plenty of queer members, sometimes they don't get issues re: gender or sexuality as much, and also the majority of what I am writing here is regarding my experience of gender and merely overlaps with my Autism/ADHD. Also for context I am 30 years old as of the start of this year and I am also AMAB who lived genuinely thinking I was only a cis man until about 2022-23.

Well, last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy. In the last four or five days, I have:

1. Been getting matches on Tinder & chatting with people. Also went on a little date for the first time in YEARS this most recent Saturday
2. Acquired my own makeup (just a few things, all pretty cheap from Wal-Mart but its all for practice & like, meditative makeup sessions for the time being, not necessarily to get dolled up in public, though I eventually will do that because I want to) for essentially the first time in my entire life. I also haven't worn makeup since high school and my early 20s, and in that context it was always as a "joke", done up in a really excessive drag style like, Rocky Horror-tier, and purely tied to the punk band I was in at the time and their performances (we weren't queer but our songs were all comedic and my subconscious was like "oooh, an EXCUSE 😃 lol). So this is really big for me. I let a really good friend of mine who is nonbinary do my makeup a couple of days ago and it was a BEAUTIFUL experience. The day before I played around on myself a bit too. Both gave me immense euphoria
3. Asked a couple of irl friends if they don't mind using they/them for me as often as they can remember/said not to feel bad if I correct them if they still use he/him going forward. I would like to ease into being referred to with they/them pronouns but also I am still sort of figuring out what is all the best fit right now. I feel "genderfluid" is the closest term to my personal experience, so I am still getting the pronouns figured out and don't want to like, harshly respond to anyone misgendering unless they do it to intentionally hurt me, which I do not think the people I have asked would ever do.

During this time, I have felt confident and been able to engage in self-forgiveness for a lot of awful traumatic things from my past (no need to explain them in detail but I should mention them). And I also have been doing better at *regulating* more intense emotional states, urges and intrusive thoughts that all relate to my neurodivergence *without* either masking or like, beating myself up mentally or self-harming in any way. I had a little argument with the friend who did makeup with me about something that, while a serious topic, did mean a lot to me that they belittled without meaning to, and I was able to not yell or allow anxiety/paranoia to accuse them of things they did not intend at all with their comment. And we were able to talk it out and had the awesome make-up night later -3

However, I am still having some mixed emotions and little mood swings. The period of really intense positive vibes emanating from my soul because I was finally taking the locks off the cage and indulging my desires to not only wade around in the feminine end of the pool when I drifted towards it but plunge head first this time have also had moments of like, mutating back into negativity. Nothing too harsh or aggressive, but just like, sometimes the intensity of the feelings wouldn't *just* be good if that makes sense? There would also be quite a bit of grief over not just missing out on doing more things like this in my 20s (lost time basically) but also more specific things.

My past love life keeps coming up in my mind. Partially this is still a good thing, I have managed to revisit a lot of horrible past situations mentally and, instead of doing that to make me hate myself more like in the past, I have managed to tell myself "It wasn't entirely your fault. You didn't know you were autistic then. You couldn't accept that you were queer. X person you were with was also flawed in Y ways, and you were both much younger and more immature. Life isn't fair and that doesn't make these bad things okay, but it means you can have grace for yourself and even some of the others, and you can learn lessons for how to reduce the hurt moving forward." But also like, it just makes me grieve a lot for the younger me(s):

The teenage "boy" who hated and resented that he had to be "male" when all he wanted to do was read books, comics and manga, and watch cartoons (those marketed to boys and girls) who got caught up in all of that stupid adolescent male "competition" over "getting" girls even though he knew it was stupid because he didn't want to be outcast even more than he already was. And, on top of that, was masking ALL THE TIME without even knowing he was on the spectrum or what masking even was yet. And then the young "man" who dropped out of high school over a plethora of mental health problems nobody, including his own parents, seemed to care about helping him with. Who did finally start, little by little, accepting that he liked other men as much as women but 1)Did not fit in much with larger "queer culture" and 2)Rarely had a real world partner who could give him not only sexual experience but, more importantly, tenderness, warmth, the non-sexual parts of intimacy, and who could just be there for him through a hard time in a young person's development.

Sometimes it feels as if those pieces of me died on the vine and my memories of them feel more like scenes from a sad movie I watched rather than my own life. Before that completely destroyed me. With therapy and the recent soul-searching, I have gotten to a point where it doesn't hurt *as much* but the pain is still there, and it tends to come up a lot when I am doing the very things that I need to to move on from all of that pain. What a paradox!

Anyway, this was a rant/vent so I am sorry it is long-winded and a bit directionless. If you read any part of it, thank you so much friends. And if you found it annoying or misplaced, I apologize very much and will delete, I don't take it personally. I hope all of you are having happy days despite larger society being so shit right now, and I hope that you continue to persevere.

Thank you all ❤️

I turned 30 earlier this year. Last year, I was diagnosed with ADHD and later in the year my older sister was diagnosed ASD, which pretty much confirmed it for me personally. I got referred to a specialist by my therapist who thought experiences I described to her and my general persona hinted at neurodivergence, and the specialist unfortunately fell through, but the guy I saw for ADHD worked out. Anyway, along with all of this, probably 10 years ago or so I came out to a lot of my friends and family as bisexual and started exploring that side of me a lot more IRL. And I would say 5 years later, back in like 2022, I realized was a "gender nonconforming" person of some kind. I am AMAB, so that was really confusing, but after talking with some trans friends and doing some research and just thinking about it, I decided "genderfluid" was the term closest to my subjective experiences with gender identity.

And so, I've got a little bit of a royal flush of being a social misfit here lol. I mean, along with all of that, I was also deeply involved in a network of punk rock and hardcore as well as Lefties of various kinds for the majority of the back half of the 2010s. I've always felt like I was "outside" everyone else, like an animal at the zoo pacing back and forth behind the plexiglass wall and watching people watch me in either fascination or disgust. And ever since I was a little kid, I found the concept of "getting down to the real thing" so interesting. I was obsessed with The Matrix when I was a child. I would watch it and its sequels over and over every time they came on TV, both because the visual effects and general aesthetic were an excellent visual stim, but also because the idea of not only "exiting the simulation" but then teaming up with a bunch of other people to go and strike back at the people who did that to us, and try to "end the nightmare" as it were, I thought it was beautiful. I know this is very naive and childish, but I was also a literal child. I would sit in class when I was like 10, not paying attention to the lesson at all, thinking about stuff I saw on TV re: the Iraq War or some other crazy scandal under Bush Jr and just think "Where the fuck is Morpheus?"

Anyway, recently, I have been calming myself immensely with a fantasy. It is only sometimes spicy, and a lot of those times it doesn't start out that way, it's just such an intimate situation its hard to prevent it from spilling over lol. But for me it is really much more like guided meditation or a visual aid for meditation.

I imagine this strong feminine presence. It's kind of irrelevant to call her a "woman" because she is really beyond gender as we think of it. But she has a feminine aura and is very powerful. And I just think about her spooning me, me being the little spoon, and whispering in my ear asking me if I wanna be played with by her. But when I say yes, she uses this power she has to turn me into a substance. Like, she stretches me like a rubber band and squishes me like slime and rolls me around until I am like a ball. And I like to think others have encountered her and tried this but it was a little too much for them so they had to politely leave before things got to intense. But with me it's like, not only can I withstand it, I want more and more. And her eyes get really big and she keeps giggling because she's fascinated at meeting someone who is enjoying this bizarre form of play so much. It's like, really fun and sweet and tender for us both. I call her "The Co-Pilot."

And sometimes towards the end of this, I imagine her gently encouraging me to allow her to dissolve for a moment the remaining masculine pieces of me. And when I say "Okay" she sends me into this place that is so incredible. It's like my skin melts off and I turn into this pool of liquid, and inside that pool I am at this place simultaneously in between and beyond any notion of gender we have as actual humans in modern American society. And she starts to coalesce me into a physical being again out of that pool, but it's like I have the physical and mental characteristics of the American stereotypes of both "male" and "female." And we just rest together like that for a while, very, very close. So close it's like our skin is starting to melt together at points. But it isn't scary or painful at all. It's just very warm and all-encompassing love.

And then I tell her I have to go back for a while and she understands and gets me back to where I need to be (my usual day-to-day presentation, which is often still very masculine). And then she just kisses me on the cheek and tells me how proud of me she is. And I come back to reality and feel very refreshed and loved and ready to go.

I'm not sure exactly why I felt compelled to share this with ya'll, but I hope that everyone who reads it has something that can center them like this when things are hard or dysphoria creeps in or anything that is a struggle develops in life. I know how hard it is, I have been through a LOT of trauma in my life, on various levels. But please don't give up everyone.

And also if you read this and just thought "Wtf", well, I am glad I could at least entertain for a moment lol. I apologize if any of it is TMI or anything, but I just really wanted to share and get perspective. Hope everyone has a good day