On International Nonbinary Day, I’m sharing my personal story of embracing my androgyny.

For me, being non-binary means allowing myself to go beyond the frames I don’t fit into, both according to others’ views and by my own choice. And nonbinary visibility is what helps me understand that I’m normal, to come to terms with myself. It helped me realize that I’m not some sort of a bizarre creature, nor a comedy character, nor an unfortunate exception to the rule. I’m a person, like anyone else. A person who is perfectly aware of all the features of their own personality and looks to break free from conventional stereotypes.

Finally, I can be completely free to tell myself that no, I don’t have to stick to labels. I’m not bound to tropes and stereotypes. I can be more than a “masculine lesbian” , a “strong female character” that doesn’t conform, a “campy gay guy” or a “pretentious metrosexual”. All these qualities might as well coexist together within me without any conflict, because why would I conflict with my own character traits and the way I live?

The most beautiful thing is that I am who I am. I don’t have to choose among all my unique features. I’m the whole package and that’s what makes me the person who I am, more so than a name or gender assigned to me at birth.

How long had I been thinking that I never wanted to be a girl, to do the things girls do, to act the way most of my peers or adult women did. And at the same time, I hated the idea of becoming a man when I started thinking that I could be a transgender man. At first, I hated myself for the fact that I would never be able to live as a fully functioning man and have sex like cisgender people do. Yet when I imagined myself with a male body, I realized that I didn’t want to live my entire life in that body. I understood that I didn’t want to be a hundred percent man. I knew there were androgynous people, but at that time, the society was so far away from tolerating homosexuality, not to speak of accepting binary transgender people. And for the most part, people around me didn’t seem to have enough emotional intelligence to not treat me as a threat or a broken cog in the system.

Needless to say my desire to use male pronouns for myself wasn’t taken seriously. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw it, my curvaceous body, sexually appealing by traditional beauty standards, my “pretty” face features, and I was disappointed in myself. I believed that no one would ever perceive me as androgynous, nor as a boy, nor as anyone other than just female body parts. So I tried to socialize as a woman, to make use of this female body of mine, and only allowed myself to be in my natural state when I was at home or with my partners. Some might say, don’t be too soft, everyone does that. Everyone gives in to the rules of this world, everyone wears masks and only let themselves relax when they’re at home. Yet I doubt many people have to play the roles that feel so alien and hated. Even though these roles might have seemed easy at first, since others succeeded.

This incompleteness, this humiliating role, having to be someone I already hated were making it even worse. I didn’t want to go outside, my inner aggression and self-hatred grew inside me tearing me apart. I hated myself and everything I was doing. Everyday, I dreamed of not waking up. Besides, people felt that I was a so-so woman, a strange woman, a woman who doesn’t want to understand what other women do, and doesn’t behave naturally. They saw through me immediately. Well, I know myself that I wasn’t able to get over my feelings to an extent where I could always be comfortable with female pronouns, expectations society keeps putting on women, my female pseudonym and the attitude to myself in general.Everything related to female gender roles was so unnatural to me that it irritated and disgusted me.

When it all went too far, I wasn’t even able to leave home. I was anxious about people not taking me seriously, deeming me insane for using male pronouns while not looking as a bulky masculine man, blaming it all on fanfiction or something like that. Sometimes, I thought the same way, too. I’ve heard them say anyone can live their life normally, settle down, even change their sexual orientation after playing around in their younger ages. They just grow over it, people said. Why wouldn’t I try to pretend that I’m the same? After all, it’s what should make other people around me happy. I started imagining myself starting a heteronormative family, or maybe a lesbian one, and I knew that was it. The best way to dig my own grave and bury myself alive. Childbirth sounded like a sentence. I would never do that to my body, I would never put everything away for the sake of becoming a living incubator. Then, I started imagining living in a male body and all those surgeries to remove body parts or construct an artificial, insensitive penis. Or facial hair growth procedures. I knew for sure that I didn’t want to be a man. I wouldn’t even want to be born as a man. Men’s life experiences are just as far from a fairy tale as female ones.

And yet I knew I wanted to live in-between, break away from being a woman without becoming a man completely. What is that even supposed to be? Is it even possible? Can one survive in this society with such paradigm of thought? Nope, I believed, I must be crazy for sure. And if I’m crazy, if they deem me crazy, then the future holds nothing good for me. What kind of creature am I, not being able to understand who I am, to find a place I belong, to fit in anywhere?

One day, a friend of mine told me they write about people like me on the internet. That such things, have a name and one can say for sure that I’m not crazy. That my identity is one of transgender identities. Moreover, the world wants to know more about nonbinary people, which means there is a chance to be heard, not to be crushed by society, and it’s even possible to embrace the gender you identify with yourself, rather than trying to hide it and get into someone else’s skin. Thanks to the visibility of other nonbinary people, I was able to understand that I no longer had to swing between the two extremes and make painful choices. To tell the truth, I had already stopped trying by that time and lived my life stuck in endless depression, without contact with the world outside, without leaving home. I was sure people like me would never survive and fulfil themselves in a binary world.

When I realized that my androgyny wasn’t just a figment of my imagination but that I could and should always stay true to myself, I set off on my journey to a new life. I started developing my style the way I had always envisioned it, I started becoming myself. Each day, each month, each year I was getting closer to being myself, to finding my place and my voice in society.I managed to step into the light and speak out about who I am and what I want. I stopped being afraid of myself. We’re few in number, but I know for sure that I’m not alone in this world.