emily - rough mix by my chemical romance

my therapist told me that your experiences as a child are one of the main factors of the person you become, and i think this is why so many parts of my identity both co-exist and contradict. i am a trans boy, but i am inherently some kind of lesbian with my own experiences and my own feelings. i am jewish, but to say that catholicism and all of its teachings and practices aren't engraved into my identity would just be incorrect. i'm hard of hearing, but i can hear, and this is a privilege, but the time i spent with no hearing whatsoever before it began to recover and the memories of how people treated me during that period is crucial to my person. i try not to mask as much anymore (at least where ASD is concerned) but i spent fourteen-fifteen years masking until i forgot how to be a person - both my identity as a 'high functioning' autistic, and i know that is an outdated term, and my identity as whatever autistic functionality label a doctor would try to put on me now are important and real parts of my identity.

in short,

i am a transgender man, i am a lesbian. i am jewish, i am catholic. i am hearing, i am deaf. i am autistic, but i try not to be. it makes sense. it might not. hell, it probably doesn't, maybe not at all, who am i to tell you if it should or shouldn't make sense to you? it makes sense to me - identity is one of those very personal things and you can't expect people to understand you or accept your feelings as truth all the time.