I'm not a womxn but...

i'm still kinda sorta a womxn😖😖😖 this confession follows despite my recent exit from the gender binary system.

My 'coming-out' as an androgynous ET was in the form of a wholesome Instagram post explaining succinctly why I have no business being a womxn, regardless of how i'm perceived.

This declaration of independence ushered in a superficial feeling of freedom. Indeed, i felt my proverbial wings unfold gracefully and prepare to take flight as a result of my now publicized gender nonconformity.

I say 'superficial' not because it's fake,  but rather 'cause it's legit not that deep. See, i have a highly developed skill of living in the clouds and ignoring 'reality'. Hence, i mostly go through life evading the thousand and one ways in which my subconscious still embodies the conditioning of the patriarchal, misogynistic gender binary. 

For instance, a couple of days ago I was reflecting on how freeing it is to finally withdraw my participation from the  "who's the fairest of us all?" game. Oh! it felt so good to post pictures of my 'ugly' self with little concern for whether or not they would attract enough likes to validate my desirability. 

But ever since, I've been in a tight grip of anxiety. An emotional response that didn't quite match my thoughts of liberation... 

After two nights of this agony, I sat myself down to ask 'why are you so tense my love?'

I WAS NOT ready for the answer that unraveled!

With this inquiry, i uncovered a can of live worms 😱 a fact that few non-binary persons want to admit, let alone face; that changing one's pronouns to 'them/they' does not lift the many years of deeply ingrained beliefs around gender. Unfortunately 😓

I found that my intellectual understanding of gender as a social construct, another power project by the insecure humxn society, a gross misrepresentation of sex etc., DOES NOT abjucate me from playing out 'womxnhood'. 

Somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious and even unconscious mind lies all the precepts i adopted by virtue of being born into a 'female' body. 

These parts of my mind give 0 fucks about the fallibility of gender or the rigidity of sex. All they know is that i'm failing miserably at being a womxn, so it's only a matter of time till i die from social persecution. 

This underlying, constant buzz of fear increased a shit ton when I perceived rejection from a masculine-presenting someone. This is a person I didn't even realize I had a romantic interest in. Maybe because I don't (jury still out on this one) ? 

Regardless of how I FEEL about them, i still lowkey want them to see me as desirable. All my subconscious 'womxn' conditioning wants is to command the 'male gaze' because how else will i have any value to this world? 👉👈

I'm thus writing this with a tight knot in my stomach, that embarrassingly will only detangle if/when they perform in ways that imply interest. Unless, of course, i take matters into my own hands and simply go on another dead-end journey in pursuit of happiness 👀🏆❓❓❓