My brief experience thinking of myself as transgender was jarring and confusing. I’d flinch if a girl referred to me as she or her; women often weaponized these pronouns against me when they viewed me as a threat or wanted to make fun of me. But I’d also cringe when boys referred to me as he or him, because those words felt too sharp, as if they were being used to remind me of my place; and when they came from boys I desired, I felt completely undesirable. I didn’t assert my truth in language, because I didn’t know how.

The older that I got, the less I felt represented in the transgender narrative. It simply did not fit. Some days I felt comfortable being a gay boy. Some days I felt at home as a beautiful girl. There were also times where I felt like neither, or both. When I got to college I started to experiment with androgyny. I cropped my long, bouncy, black weave into a blond and crimson Mohawk. I started to wear my clothes a bit looser so that people couldn’t identify my gender.

If I’d had access to the right language, it’s possible that I might have felt empowered by this change. Instead, people on campus began referring to me as “it” or “he-she.” Eventually I folded into myself. I cut my hair off, wore drastically less makeup and took to wearing all black clothing, because I was constantly mourning the identities I might have had, that the world had slowly killed. I became increasingly depressed and even attempted to end my life.

In the years since, inclusion in language has blossomed. Now we not only have glorious and complex examples of what it means to be transgender, we also have words for people like me who simply don’t feel at home as male or female, or being referred to as he or she. Now we have words like gender neutral, gender deviant, gender nonconforming and non-binary making and taking up space. Now we have pronouns like “they/them” and “zi/zer,” among many others.

Sadly, it feels as though I missed the bus. I am completely at home now with my male identification. I don’t know whether this was a natural progression or if I was beaten into submission by the world. However I got here, I feel comfortable with my “he” and “him,” but I know that I lost a lot in my retreat. At times I still fear that I’m not being my most authentic self.