people worry a lot about trans kids not knowing what they want or not being sure about their identities, and I've been thinking about how I felt as a kid and what I knew about myself back then.

I knew a lot! I just didn't have the words for it.

as far back as I can remember, I've dreamt about not being a girl. I'm a vivid dreamer, I dream often and I generally remember my dreams. even as a very small child, I was almost never a girl in my dreams.

I didn't know that meant something! if I thought about it at all, I just thought that since so many of my role models and inspirations were men, it was natural to want to be more like them. (which it was! but I think I had my cause and effect mixed up.)

I never had any strong sense of wanting to be a man, and I still don't because that's not who or what I am, but I've always wanted to be boyish. I didn't wear dresses for years, even when my parents tried to make me. almost all of my friends at school were boys.

my parents and teachers called me a tomboy, and other students called me, uh, less flattering things, but I knew that wasn't right. it wasn't that I didn't want to be pretty or feminine. it was that the way people expected me to be, to look, to act, just wasn't right.

my first sex dreams ever were all from the perspective of the boy, even when the girl in them was me. the first lead role I ever had in a play was the male lead. I cried when my parents told me they were sending me to a single sex high school. in retrospect, yeah, I knew a lot.

but I didn't have any words for what I knew. all I "knew" about trans people was that sometimes men wore dresses to be funny or because they were gay. I didn't know about hormones or surgery or pronouns or name changes (except as the butt of jokes) until my very late teens.

and I think about all the time I spent lost and confused, with nobody to talk to and no idea what questions to ask even if I could find someone to listen, and I just don't want that for any other kid if it can be avoided, you know? it's miserable.

every now and then I feel like I must be some kind of fraud because I haven't started hormones and I don't want surgery, and then I remember that at five years old, I was dreaming of myself as a boy. I was so young and I already felt different.

I never told my parents because what would I even say to them? my mother is okay about trans people now, but she definitely wasn't when I was a kid. my dad is never going to be okay with them. and even if they were the most accepting people ever, I didn't *know* what was up.

as far as I knew, all little girls dreamt about being little boys, and it was just something you dealt with. growing up, I wasn't even meant to talk about my dreams. some religious taboo, I think - proof against superstition or attempts at dream interpretation.

I always wanted a deeper voice. it cracked a bit when I hit puberty, just like it did for my brothers, and that felt so affirming and I didn't know why. there were all these little signs, things that could have helped me understand myself so much sooner.

my mother used to say I walked like a man - long strides, extremely graceless. (she says I am graceful until I start moving.) I took it as a kind of challenge. any time someone said something I did was mannish, I wanted to do it more.

I thought for years that I just wanted to be like my father. and I do, and I am - but I never thought about why so many of the people I wanted to be like were men. when I did think about it, I guess I thought it was a sexism thing; men had access to opportunities, prestige.

I wish I'd seen trans people on TV as something other than the butt of jokes. I wish my parents had talked about trans people positively. I wish literally any of the adults in my life had asked me the right questions. I could have done something about this *years* ago.

I didn't come out until I was twenty-five. I didn't really start social transition until a year ago. and I've been dreaming of boyhood since I was five, a kid on the playground who always felt just a little bit wrong in their skin.

just having the words changes so much. just being able to put a name to it. I don't think working it out earlier would have made me want surgery or anything that I don't currently want. I think it would have just made me less unhappy in my body. just knowing.

I'm not a man and I don't want to be one. for me, it's not as simple as being born on one end of the binary and wanting to switch to the other. but I've always been not a girl and now I'm not a woman, and imagine if I'd known that before going to an all girls high school!

I've found ways of being not exactly comfortable in women's spaces, but if finding my niche. but it's never been exactly right. I loved high school but I knew I was different from my girl friends - not better or worse, but different.

and as a teenager, it sucks seeing everyone else grow into themselves over time, and instead of that happening to you, you just seem to keep growing the wrong way, farther and farther from your inner self. and it sucks even more not knowing what's happening or why.

I didn't need hormones at thirteen, am not sure I need them now, but imagine if someone had explained to me why my first period made me feel like such a total stranger in my body, or why I was so upset when my voice didn't get deeper and I stopped getting taller, or, or, or.

imagine if someone had been there to explain, to give me the words to talk about what was happening to me. it's so scary not knowing. it's so lonely not to be able to tell anyone. it just feels like failure. I felt like I was failing at being a woman.

I didn't need to go through that. I don't want anyone else to go through it. just give kids the words, if nothing else. give them safe people to talk to, space to express themselves. it might not even be anything! but it doesn't hurt anyone, even if they end up cis, to just talk.

everyone should be able to talk about this, cis people included! gender should be affirming and validating, not this long list of ways you have to measure up. it should feel good and right. it should feel like a thing you get to build for yourself.