Today I was thinking about this story I heard in a youtube video where two transgender people explain a bit about their journeys of coming to the realization that they were trans, and one of them recounts being in 4th grade, before he knew that transgender people existed, and making up a word to describe the way he felt. Here's the video if you'd like to watch it (It should start on the exact part of the discussion that I'm talking about. It's about a minute out of the hour-long video): I never gave much thought to my gender as a kid, but when I was about that age, I made up this idea of people whose personalities complimented each other perfectly and were meant to be best friends, like a sort of platonic soulmate, and I used that to describe my relationship with my best friend at the time. In retrospect, I'd say I had a huge squish on this friend ("squish" is a term used mostly by the aromantic community to describe the platonic equivalent to a crush), but didn't have a word for it, and this thing that I made up at the time about platonic soulmates, or "think-alikes", as I called them, was my way of trying to explain how I felt. Now I'm wondering if this is a common thing. Does anyone else recall making up words or concepts as a kid to compensate for a lack of language to explain your experience? If so, was it at around this same age? I'm curious to hear your story if you have one.
Well, I didn't know that what I felt towards woman was a crush, so I one time asked my mom and sister if they had a "favorite woman" and told them that I had a "favorite woman" every year.
I don't even think I had the level of self-awareness where it occurred to me to do that. It never occurred to me unless you considered tumblr sexualities/genders to be made up terms. I followed some of those terms in my mid/late teens 16-19, I think.
This^ I always felt different...always knew I was different, but I never knew exactly how I was different. I didn’t really have any perception of who I was at that level as a kid, so I don’t recall ever creating new words or names for how I felt or for how I experienced relationships as a kid. I do remember feeling like everyone else was inside a glass box, and I felt that I was outside of it looking in and watching everyone live their lives. Like I just didn’t fit into that box with everyone else.
I remember asking a girl in my class was there an older girl that she really really wanted to be friends with. I was 7 and it was the best way to explain my feelings. Figured out later it was a crush. I never had a name for it as a child. I do remember there was a girl in my class who's surname was Gay and she got teased about it. None of the kids knew what it meant but in a catholic school gay was considered bad.
In high school, before I knew what I was, but when I started thinking about my sexuality, I was trying to sort through what I was feeling. I called myself "straight with gay tendencies." The odd thing was though, I knew what bisexual was at this time, but it didn't click with me that that is what I was. This phrase was very short-lived though, as I only used it once out loud (and for a few weeks in my head) then went back to thinking I was straight after my friend (who is also bisexual) said that straight with gay tendancies wasn't a real thing.
