#i wish i wasn't so indecisive with whether to be social or not

[cozypups]

MY OLDEST sister has plans to hang out with friends, go grocery shopping and then hangout at one of their houses and watch the one dungeons & dragns movie, maybe even swimming and invited me, should i go? we'd be leaving at 6 and it's currently 5:27 🥴 i'm feeling kind of not social and i know if i go i won't be able to scurry away like the little rat i am to my room to recharge........... but i also know i'll probably regret it and mayb there'd be really tasty food there........

[timeoverload]

I am so embarrassed. I just got home from the dentist and it turns out that I don't have an abscess. That's good news. The bad news is that I have a different type of infection and I am having a break out. I don't want to be too specific because I am too embarrassed. I will say that 80% of the population has it and it's very common. I have never had a break out before but it could be worse. It was triggered because I am so stressed. It's not painful, just annoying. It is just one spot and it should go away by Wednesday if I use the medicine. I am still upset and a little self-conscious, but I will be ok.

I guess I will be going to work tomorrow so I still have PTO left. I haven't heard from my doctor yet but it's still early so I'm going to wait to try to call them. I suppose I need to try harder to keep my stress under control so I don't trigger any more health problems. I will try to make it a good day but I don't think it is going to get any better. I am so grumpy.

I hope everyone else has a good day.

Maxwell, why are you being so hot and cold? Honestly, I feel a little angry when you are wishy-washy. I think you need to take a second to try to put yourself in my shoes and look at this situation from my perspective. How do you think it makes me feel when you act that way? I would like consistency and I'm growing tired of your dismissive and indecisive attitude. It is adding to my stress a lot and I'm not interested in playing games. Do you really want to be by yourself and avoid social interaction? It really sucks that you feel that way. I'm sorry if you are in a bad mood or if I did something to upset you. I'm not sure what is going on with you. I'm not sure what I did. Apparently you don't think that I'm worth making the effort for. I don't think I ask for much and I'm not trying to nag you. I don't want to be with someone who thinks I am an inconvenience. It doesn't matter how sweet I am. It's not going to make you care. Sometimes I wonder if you love me as much as I love you. I think maybe you would be happier if I wasn't around to annoy you so you can go enjoy your alone time. Your alone time is the only thing that seems to matter to you. You seem to want that more than you want a family. If you truly can't decide whether you want to be with me or alone, then that's a problem. That shouldn't be such a difficult decision to make. It sounds like you already made up your mind and you want to be alone. I'm not going to be able to keep doing this forever because it is literally going to kill me. It's not healthy for me. I don't want to die of a broken heart but that might just happen at this rate. I have never been so distraught over someone in my entire life. I really wish you would stop being mean to me. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. I don't know why I bother sharing my life with you if you don't want to do that with me. I'm sorry for trying too hard and smothering you. I feel like I am just making a fool out of myself at this point. I don't know what else to say. I still love you, even though I am upset with you. I suppose I should give you your space because it seems like you need that right now. I hope you feel better.

[littlefandomfrog]

I'm struggling with identity at the moment. How did you figure out you were genderfluid? It sounds like a weird question and feel free not to answer, but I grew up in a household against pride and I've had to learn everything myself.

Hello anon! This isn't a weird question at all! I wish I'd had someone I felt comfortable asking this to, even anonymously, when I was questioning!

I would love to answer this, or any other questions people want to send in about my experiences with gender, sexuality, any of that stuff! I wasn't raised in a place that was against pride, but I was raised with little to no exposure to LGBT material so I know what you mean about having to learn on your own. It's a bit terrifying sometimes, isn't it? Kind of existential.

Okay, this ended up a lot longer than I first thought it would be, so I've put a cut here for anyone who just wants to read some fanfiction and not hear my life's story.

I am afab (assigned female at birth), and was happy to call myself female for most of my life. It was really only once lockdown hit my area and one of my close friends came out as lesbian that I really started looking into LGBTQIA+ identities and started questioning myself. Sexuality was my first look into that world, and I ended up coming to the conclusion that I am omniromantic and bisexual, questioning abrosexuality (think genderfluid, but for sexuality, where it changes sometimes).

It was after that that I started consuming more LGBT+ media and hearing about some trans folks' experiences with dysphoria and not fitting in with their assigned gender at birth. Something in that really struck a bell with me. I don't experience a ton of dysphoria most of the time, and I had just assumed that any discomfort I had with my body was from my social anxiety or depression bringing along some self-esteem and body image issues. One message that's really stuck with me was something along the lines of "being trans is not about how much dysphoria you feel being misgendered, it's about the euphoria that comes when something feels right." So I asked some friends to try using different pronouns for me. I started out with she/they, since I wanted to keep some of the familiarity of being female. I loved it whenever anyone used "they" to refer to me, and I soon expanded to any pronouns. Initially this just meant he/she/they/it, since I had never heard of neopronouns. My first experience with neopronouns was actually through fanfiction! I tried them out through the same method as before, and liked them, so I now use pretty much any pronouns most of the time.

I was content to remain unlabeled for a while, with just minor preferences to whatever pronouns people used for me. I don't know how I first heard about genderfluidity, but something about it clicked into place for me. Sometimes I was okay with feminine pronouns and adjectives, and sometimes I wanted to hurl myself as far away from the conversation when I heard them. Sometimes I loved being referred to as something masculine, while other times I was indifferent.

For a while I felt like I was just being undecided, and was questioning myself so much about whether I was trans or cis and faking it. I'm naturally an indecisive person, so I thought that this might be me just not being able to make a choice. It was only once I met another genderfluid person online and saw some things they were saying that lined up with what I was feeling that I really felt like, "Oh, this is okay. I can be genderfluid, and it's perfectly valid, and anyone who says I have to choose can just screw off." (Side note, the same thing can be said for sexuality! You're all valid, whether you're straight, bi, pan, gay, lesbian, ace, aro, omni, abro, or anywhere else on the sexuality spectrum!)

I guess the short answer to how I decided I was genderfluid is that I tried out a bunch of different pronouns, liked them, questioned myself, went online and found more people who were feeling the same thing, continued to question myself, and eventually went "screw it, I'm valid just as I am." I also found a bunch of different definitions for the various gender identities, specifically from people who identified as that identity, to try and line up what I was feeling with what others were feeling.

I hope this was helpful! Feel free to ask more questions if you have any more, or want to hear about something else! Remember, you are valid, and it's perfectly fine to be unsure about yourself. You might find one label that fits just fine now but find something better later. That's what I did! Or, you can even decide to say "no <3" (or something slightly less polite) to labels altogether and be who you are as you are!

I hope you have a great day, and are able to be who you are with no consequences. Welcome to the LGBT+ family, if you decide that fits. If not, you are still perfectly yourself, and that's enough. You are enough. Even when you question yourself, you are you, and someone (even if it's just me!) loves you for that <3