Being Transgender & Non-Binary With Anxiety & ADHD Tics
Tags: Transgender, Nonbinary, Adhd, Tics, Anxiety

Why Am I Different? Am I Different In A Good Way? How Do I Cope? Everything In General

Let’s begin.. Firstly I want to identify the keywords for the cis-gender people that might read this or just for people that do not know what these words mean.

Transgender: Denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

Non-Binary: Denoting or relating to a gender or sexual identity that is not defined in terms of traditional binary oppositions such as male and female or homosexual and heterosexual.

Cis-Gender: Denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.

Androgynous: Partly male and partly female in appearance; of indeterminate sex.

Now we can begin.

Growing up as transgender was never a part of my plan, however most people think that it is, they think I woke up one day and said, “Screw being a female! Let’s be a dude!”. However, this could not be more wrong. I always grew up feminine. I was like most little girls, I liked skirts, liked boys, and could not wait to grow up and get breasts. But little did I know how I would feel when puberty did occur. As I grew up I did not like wearing dresses, I did not like putting my hair up in the pink bows and frilly hair-ties, I could have lived without them. I was highly active and hated staying in one spot. I loved sports and was very athletic. But when puberty began and I began filling into my “female form” I felt, exposed. It is hard to explain because I was very confused as to why I did not like what I saw in the mirror. But despite how I felt I tried to dress feminine because even though I did not like my female body parts, those referring to my breasts and vagina, I still wanted to be feminine. Now it was not because I did not want to disappoint my parents or anything, I just truly loved wearing female stereotyped clothing. So, for four years I wore low cut tank tops, booty shorts, and skirts. And before anyone says, “It is because you wanted to show off your body!”, I never did, I wore those clothes because I wanted to. Because I refused to let my body get in the way of dressing the way I wanted to.

Later I found out that when I was younger I would always have short hair, because I would cut it, I used to do masculine haircuts on myself. But once puberty hit, I began to grow out my hair in order to hide my chest and make it less noticeable. I would also begin to wear makeup at the young age of nine or ten. This was mainly because I was insecure about my looks, I did not like how my face looked, but now that I look back it was because when I was younger I had a very feminine looking face, now I have an androgynous looking appearance. But I would often get made fun of because I really tried to look after my appearance and how I expressed myself, because I really did not use my voice. It was just, there, you know? So body language was really the only way I knew how to communicate my emotions. In that, I began to cover my body more to hide the physical aspects I hated so much, thus how I expressed myself was drowned out.

But more on how I grew up, I grew up with a mostly single mother until around four, my biological father was pretty absent in my life and I had an older sister. Well, my older sister was very androgynous growing up, she had the feminine body but the “masculine” attitude. So, I was sort of led into the idea that a female should have a feminine attitude and appearance. I was often called pretty growing up, which I did not mind and still do not to this day, however things like, “Oh, Your so beautiful.”. Now beautiful was a word that I had trouble wrapping my head around. I did not like being called beautiful. As insults my sister would call me a boy, she would not be kind though, she had this tone in her voice that it was not meant to be a kind gesture. She would also yell, hit, push, punch, smack, basically use me as the, “Beat me up whenever doll”. From this I developed really bad anxiety, and around middle school I began experiencing anxiety and ADHD tics. I still experience them today, however they are more often and can be quite violent.

Tics: *Anything Vocal comes out in a baby voice*

Smacking my wrists together or against things.

Flinging my head backward or to the side, normally in a violent twisting motion.

Saying, “UwU, Hai, No, HaHa, and a few curse words *On rare occasion* (Curse words include the F Slur commonly used for people part of the LGBTQ+.(My verbal tics are said in a high pitched baby voice, it’s kinda cute when its not a curse word).

Flipping the Bird. (Middle Finger) and saying a vocal tic right after. (Lovely ain’t it?)

Making a high pitch noise.

Smiling and giggling

Saying, “Ooh!”

Making noises with my nose (Deep inhales and exhales)

Hand will “fly away” and go flap flap up towards the sky.

So as you can probably guess sometimes people do not understand why I am acting the way I do. I try to suppress my tics for as long as I can to not be annoying or hard to look at. Over the years I have learned I can suppress them for about four hours when it is a good day and I am barely ticing, however when it is a bad day and I am ticing too often I cannot suppress them for more than roughly an hour. However my tics do not happen every single day, they can still be hard to handle. Because they do not happen everyday I cannot be prepared to deal or suppress them 24/7, which means I sometimes get caught off guard with a mega tic, or a ticing combo, composed of A LOT OF TICS.

But back on topic. Growing up as a child that felt weird in their own body was not something I found to be “quirky” or “cool”, and that does NOT make us child predators or a danger to anyone, if we do choose to use the restroom associated with OUR gender identity. We really just wanna use the restroom. We gotta pee too ya know? And why is it such a big problem to transphobics and homophobics what WE are doing with OUR life? It is our life, not yours. Unless you are a puppet master and we have strings attached to us it will be our choice. But I’m 15 now, and in 3 years I will be old enough to seek out help along my transition. Because after all, medically transitioning is part of what I want to do.

Thank you for reading! My name is Micheal, and I am a 15 year old, gay, transgender/Non-binary high school student. My pronouns are He/Them, and I just wanted to say thank you for reading this little lengthy post of mine! Bye now!