I was asked to defend myself in what I think makes me a woman.

And I elected to just explain my dysphoria to answer the question. She had asked me why makeup and nails makes me think I'm a woman or feel like calling myself one. And here was my long winded answer, and be warned I get a little pretentious at the end:

My understanding of the baseline human experience was different than most people. My understanding of my sense of self was basically split into three different aspects that made up 'me.'

• My awareness
• My brain
• My body

My awareness would experience, observe, was the thing that was... me. I never processed anything, I was simply there observing and experiencing life as it actively happened. I didn't 'feel' emotions, I simply watched them happen to my body. All three of these aspects of me were completely disconnected from one another, as if my processing, my brain, was a black box. Observation go in, stomach ulcers come out. Observation go in, tears, stress, happiness, facial expressions come out. At most the only thing I felt was mild curiosity when my body reacted one way or another.

One day, in my late twenties I watched as my body reacted to a guy. I felt my bodies face flush, I felt the physical reaction to the nerves, the stuttering, the fluster. It was so intense and embarassing that it actually flooded past my body and into my awareness and I FELT it. I EXPERIENCED it. Which, confused the ever living hell out of me. So I turned my awareness towards that black box in my head and asked what the hell was going on in there.

For the longest time I couldn't really get into my head so I had to turn to watching my bodies reactions to understand what was going on. I started hanging out with queer people, my body reacted positively. I tried queerer things, my body smiled in the mirror. I tried out bi-liner (eyeliner) and my body felt so much joy that it spilled over into my awareness and I cried from happiness, and actually felt it.

The more I... tried feminine things, the more I connected to my sense of self. The more I became whole and less three separate parts. Calling myself a woman connected my psyche, being seen as such made the emotions in my head less terrifying.

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My inner world is usually quite visual and based on the lifetime I have of experience disassociating and looking for escapism in books. (welcome to the pretentious part)

When I was dysphoric, I imagine walking in an infinite void next to an infinite brick wall. The brick wall was just there, and at most I could only ever feel emotion when it was so overpowering that I could feel the heat of anger coming off the bricks. On rare occasion the wall would break and I would be overcome with rage or terror but the wall always returned, leaving me safe in the void.

After a few months on HRT that wall became more and more transparent, glass-like, until eventually it was just a thin membrane. On one side was me, in the void, and the other, a swirling mass of an ocean filled with little streams of colors. Red representing anger, blue sorrow, yellow happiness. Greens and purples and various shades all swimming around, becoming more intense in their hues when I would think of certain things or when other things happened. Emotions that I could actually see in real time happening and not just feel when the dam breaks. When I wanted to I could reach in, watch those colors swarm around my fingers and actually feel them.

Then the wall broke, and I was overwhelmed with it all, unable to find reprieve, washed away in an ocean beset by a hurricane. Decades of trauma overwhelmed me, emotions and memories that had been locked away battered me, pushing me under, unable to breathe. And for a long time that was my life. The storm would clear up, I would have a reprieve, I would swim with my emotions, experience actual life, and then on occasion the ocean would turn treacherous and I would cling to driftwood or get bashed against rocks.

I am four years into my medical transition, and have gone to therapy to try to find solutions for when these emotions that I locked away for decades batter me. These days I have freedom, a crew, found family, a ship made of tools to help me guide my way through storms, a star chart to help me navigate my inner world, a cabin to hide in when the storms get to be too much, and an ocean of beauty to swim in when seas are calm.

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So yes. Hair, makeup, calling myself a woman may seem silly for someone AMAB. But doing so connects me to myself, makes me experience life instead of just observe it. Allows me to be a part of the world and not outside it. It's weird. I know. But clearly being myself has a lot of benefits.

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Outside that, tbh, I just can't relate to men. At all. When I read a book, see a movie, talk to a person, play a videogame, I can see myself in women. I cannot see myself in men. Sure, I can understand a man and his motivations. But I can't relate.