The comfort in identifying oneself as something

Perhaps one of the most accepted and vile crimes committed by humankind is that against the emotional well-being of the individual. If one takes an individual to be a being of both rational intellect and unfathomable emotional depths, then it shouldn't be difficult to see how attempting to convey either in simplistic terms is to deny its very existence and with it the whole that makes up an individual.

In light of such thoughts, it's rather telling when I consider that I still cannot put a name to who or what I can see in the mirror. Even as I can feel myself becoming more... myself, in the sense that my thoughts and actions feel more like my own, it's still an impossible task to put what I am, who I am and all the countless details around this into words.

In the end we are all our own person, beyond question. As easy as it would have been for me to pick an identity or accept one of the identities that got picked for me over the decades, to do so would have meant betraying the person whom I am inside. The very concept of identifying as anything when this does not match up with reality is to embrace self-delusion as a life-style.


The identity of being male. Of being female. The endless questions about my preferences when it comes to romance and more, about why I don't like using make-up regularly, and so on. All questions that establish some kind of identity, but which are not about me as a person. At some point it begins to dawn on you that many of those identity things are just behavioural things that are common to a specific culture. Things like what type and colour of clothing one is or isn't allowed to wear, whether men are allowed to use make-up or not, whether seeing someone of the opposite sex naked outside of a romantic encounter is a reason to get sexually excited or not.

After removing all of this cultural decoration, it's really not a lot what you're left with. Identify all you want, but in the end a man is someone with a body that has solely male characteristics, and vice versa for women. Ergo I am neither. And both. Also sexual attraction is just weird and probably isn't supposed to make sense.

The question there for the longest time was probably in how far I should even care about any of those things. I used to think I did care, but over the years it has faded in importance. What I have come to feel stronger is a longing for the parts of 'me' back as a child and teenager which I now feel were my genuine identity.


In the past I have mentioned the sensation of a 'child me' being stuck in this dark, quiet room. Crying and traumatised. I'm pretty sure that was a visualisation of the traumas and PTSD which I have been collecting since I was five years old. Back then it felt as if every single sensory impression and every thought passed through this traumatised child, to be interpreted and parsed.

Even after freeing the child from the room, I could still feel its presence in my mind. Distorting, twisting and subverting my own thoughts and impressions. Over the past months I have fought a battle against this presence, pushing it away when I felt it clouding my mind and thoughts again. With the traumatic presence no longer as strong, it feels as if my thoughts no longer are guided through a convoluted maze. Instead there's just... me, I guess.


The only honest thing to identify as is yourself.


Yet even as I come closer to identifying myself, it becomes more and more painfully obvious that society will not grant me the same favour. When society has collectively decided to abandon its senses with pseudo-scientific concepts like 'gender identity' and its doubling down on the scientifically incorrect dimorphic nature of the human brain, what hope is there for those who do not wish to betray themselves with such delusions?

I have a body which medical science at this point struggles to explain. Simultaneously I feel the complete disconnect with society when it comes to the aforementioned delusions and what I as a chimaeric intersex person have and continue to experience. What can I do with this but to accept that there's no real place for me in society?


The irony is perhaps that by finally accepting myself the way I truly am, I may end up losing that last link with society as my existence escapes its ability to quantify and understand me. When the only way that I can formally exist in society is by pretending to be something which I am not, is that truly an existence worth fighting for?


Maya