Frozen, a weight of my shoulders I didn’t even know I was carrying. I started realizing my gender didn’t quite fit in when I was around 16 years old.
I felt uncomfortable when I was told what a nice young lady I was becoming, and I realized I hated being called a woman. I was jealous of every teenage boy I knew.
They were allowed to exist without pressure to shave, or eat less, or grow out their hair just because of gender. I didn’t want to be a boy, but I sure as heck didn’t want to become the woman I was expected to be.
For me, it was the pure joy I felt the first time I cut my hair. At the time, I had long, wild brown curls that gave me a great deal of pain, but that my relatives were obsessed over.