Trying (and failing) to fit in

I cracked when I had the mental and emotional capacity to do so.

From my diary, I see signs back when I was 11-12. I was fascinated by lgbt- issues, and deviations from expected gender roles especially. However, I didn't have the vocabulary then. Trans only meant trans women.. Playing with gender was something only other people could do. Not someone like me.

I got to know a trans man when I was around 16, but I... Cared too much. Too much a stickler for the rules. Cared too much what others thought or what they saw as Right. I wanted to fit in. And knew I didn't. 

I MIGHT have cracked at... 20-25 ish. I was super fascinated by crossdressers and trans people. Knew several of them through the kink scene. But I was too caught up in performative femininity then. Again, I just wanted to fit in. To be accepted. 

So I tried harder and harder. Knowing I was "flawed" because others saw me as weird. Flawed because I could tell I wasn't fitting in. Because I really, really wasn't comfortable with femininity at all, but felt I had to be. Failing at all of it, but seeing this as a personal failure. Not as a sign of anything else.

By 35 I had a fairly stable life, a job, kids starting to sleep through the night etc. I had time to think again. To feel. And by 35 I'd started to give fewer fucks about it all. Didn't try to follow the Rules quite as much. Realized that it was POSSIBLE to choose something other than what society expected of you. 

That's when I cracked. 

It's really sad, in many ways. I wonder what my life would have been like, if I'd cracked earlier.