On a recent Saturday night, I’m getting ready for an outing with friends, but what am I going to wear? Looking on one side of my closet, I see the flannels, the hoodies. Not feeling it… On the other side, I have some more form-fitting outfits. My turtlenecks and crop tops, a couple skirts off to the side. Yes. I think glamming up is the move today.

I’m an AMAB, assigned male at birth, non-binary and have been out since 2021, when I was 17. I fall under the transgender umbrella, though for a long time I didn’t claim that part of myself. I understand that some readers might be confused about what “Non-binary” or “AMAB” means, so I’ll give a quick description. AMAB means I was born, and for much of my life, I identified as male. Non-binary is a little harder to explain, so I’ll give a definition, then my own explanation.

The International Review of Psychiatry defines “genderqueer” and “non-binary” as umbrella terms for individuals who identify as both neither male or female. These also apply if the gender a person identifies with changes at different times.

Now the way I like to explain it. A lot of people are afraid of commitment; this is pretty common. Well, I don’t like commitment (when it comes to gender), and I don’t like to label myself as just male or female. Sometimes I’ll flip-flop between feeling like either, but I don’t commit to one. I feel comfort in my masculinity, but I feel free in my femininity, so why not embrace both?

I didn’t always feel free to be myself. In fact, I used to be the person that put others down for being themselves. 

In high school, I was transphobic, and someone I took that out on was my best friend Kira Waldron. I still wince whenever I think back on it.

In 2019, a 14-year-old me would see my best friend Kira walk into the restroom wearing shorts and come back out in a skirt. I didn’t have a problem with how she’d dress, but I would actively try to deadname her and use the wrong pronouns. She’d told me she identified as a woman, but I would still use he/him pronouns towards her, and use the name assigned to her by her parents, rather than her chosen name, Kira.

At the time, I couldn’t wrap my head around what being transgender was. At the time I had no idea what this meant, and it didn’t seem like most of my friends knew what it meant either.Looking back now, I realize I was 100% projecting my feelings on her. I’m not very proud of who I was early in high school, but I think it was important for me to be an idiot and learn from my mistakes. 

I recently had a conversation with Kira about the time I came out to her two years after she came out.

She said, “I didn’t really consider that being a thing for you just because…”

“The option of me being queer?” I responded.

“Just cause of our histories with that kinda stuff…no offense, just at the time I didn’t feel comfortable talking to you about any of that stuff,” she adds.

“Rightfully so, valid…” I finish.

My junior year, the pandemic happened. I was locked in my room alone with so much time to think. I also started frequenting online queer spaces, so I exposed myself to other people’s identities and sexualities. Going through Discord group chats that were queer friendly or sitting in the game VRChat and listening to people talk about themselves opened me up to all these new identities I didn’t know existed. 

I can’t remember how exactly I came across the non-binary identity, but I think sitting with it helped me stop being such a hypocrite. Taking time to learn what it meant to be non-binary, I started feeling like I could relate to this.

I was still feeling some internalized phobia. I was also feeling deep guilt about what I had done to my friend, so I felt like I didn’t deserve to accept my identity for a while.  

I didn’t notice how apprehensive Kira was when I came out to her, but over time we both became comfortable in who each other was. Her journey was a lot harder than mine, I had the luxury of having people who had grown to accept people like us. That’s not something I realized until now.

The song that I think really helped me understand what I am was “Cigarette Daydreams” by Cage the Elephant. There was something about that song that made everything inside of me just kind of click.

“Looking for the answers in the pouring rain, you wanna find peace of mind, looking for the answer,” Matt Shultz sings, backed by instrumentation. I connected the song to my identity; it feels like a breakup song to my former identity and soul searching in the fallout.

Around the time I graduated high school in 2021, I finally came out as bisexual and non-binary to my close friends. It was horrifying; I remember joining a Discord call with my friends Markus and Nathan. We were all freaking out about the SAT we didn’t end up taking, and I was pacing around my room trying to figure out how to tell them about my identity. My whole body felt cold and I had a pit in my stomach the whole time, like the feeling you get before a presentation, but worse. When I finally got the words out, they were accepting. We talked about it for a bit and then went back to stressing as if nothing changed.

I did have friends who were resistant to me coming out. It seemed like they actively tried to misgender me, but because I had done that myself to others, I gave them grace. I probably shouldn’t have. I remember one of those friends would fumble with what to call me constantly.

“Sir- um ma’am- I mean-” was something I heard a lot from this person. I accept that it’s hard to get the right words at first; it was a big change. But when that went on for the next three years, it became unacceptable.

That disregard for my pronouns is something I still face today, even from other queer people. I have gay friends that still use he/him towards me. I find it odd, but I try not to let it bother me. It’s something I’ve learned to deal with, though I know I shouldn’t have to. My only rule I’ve kept up to this day is that only my close friends should be referring to me by my proper pronouns and name, no exceptions.

With most queer folks, I think the biggest barrier or worry is family. Our parents grew up in different times, which leads to them not always being accepting of our identities. Whether it’s our sexual preferences or gender identities. In the past, media would tend to portray trans folks negatively. In 1991, the film adaptation of “Silence of the Lambs” was released. The film demonizes transgender identities and gender dysphoria through its main antagonist Buffalo Bill. Later, starting around the 2010s, trans characters like Venus Van Damme of the show “Sons of Anarchy” would start to appear. Real stories that weren’t meant to demonize or make fun of these identities.

With others in my life, it’s more complicated. My mother is my biggest supporter for almost anything. She’s always been there for me, and I just wouldn’t be here today without her. Aside from financially supporting me for so long, I feel like I can come to her when I need someone to encourage me to push myself. Despite that, she’s never really accepted the real me. I present as a man in front of her because, if I don’t, her comments seriously hurt my feelings.

She would see me in a new outfit like a crop top and say something like: “It doesn’t look good on you.”

Sometimes she’d just give me a look and then ignore me.
 
I recall a car ride in 2022 after having lunch with her. I had recently told her I was bisexual and tried explaining the whole non-binary thing, but she didn’t understand, so I gave up on that one. I was also experimenting with more feminine clothing, makeup and painting my nails. When I had asked her why she was so resistant to me embracing femininity, she said, “I just don’t want you getting hurt.”

According to Everytown, “Since January 2017, there have been 316 homicides of transgender individuals in America.”

I’m not a parent; I’m 22 and I can’t even imagine having any amount of little boogers running around. But I understand her worries; I think they’re valid. It doesn’t hurt any less though.

Still, in 2022, I started to feel a lot of gender dysphoria. The NHS defines “gender dysphoria” as a feeling that there is a mismatch in a person’s biological sex and gender identity.

It’s odd. I’ve never felt like I needed to fully transition to be comfortable in my body. During this time though, I was nitpicking everything about my body. My frame, too skinny. My shoulders, too broad. Body hair? I wanted it all gone.

I felt like everything about my body was a disgusting mess. In my mind, it felt like every piece of flesh on my bones had this sharp, throbbing pain.

From 2022 to 2023, my partner, at the time, who I had just started dating, helped me slowly change my perspective on things. She helped me see all the good parts of myself and find positives in the things I hated. Body tea and what not.

I learned about parts of myself that I could change that helped me feel androgynous, or masc/fem if I ever swayed a certain way.

We associate the length of a person’s hair to what gender they are a lot of the time. My luxurious locks have been flowing since high school.

I bought clothes for both spectrums of gender so I could again flip-flop whenever I wanted to. I have these olive overalls that I just love when the girlie in me wants to take the reins. My flannel works when I just want to be a dude.

In 2024 I started leaning into an interest of mine that had been there for a while, but I never really explored much. I started to really have a hyper interest in clowns.

I found that painting my face would make me feel like I was hiding the gendered parts of myself. I would do it mostly at home, whenever I felt like I wanted to be nothing, not girl or boy.

My clothes would act as this definitive “I’m this gender,” but the paint acts as a free space for me to take a break from the idea of gender.

I hope that my experience can act as an opportunity for people who aren’t out yet but just need a little push to be themselves. Even to anyone cisgendered and heterosexual, I hope this gives your insight on people like me. In a world so hellbent to put us down, we just want to exist.

Taken from the Summer 2026 print issue of Inside Fullerton. Read it here.