Late Bloomer

 "I Have no Special Talent. I am Only Passionately Curious"

           -Albert Einstein

If I were to ask you to imagine a 12 year old girl, a certain image comes to mind. Pigtails, a dress, blue eyes, your subconscious mind conjures a stereotype almost instantly. Now when i ask you to picture a 22 year old man, what do you imagine? 

people have a way of talking to/about me that makes me feel like a rather interesting new exhibit at the zoo. This is because I don't fit into the box of what you imagine a 22 year old man to be, and I have always been both flattered and annoyed by this. I'm smarter than most 22 year olds, my interests are more obscure, and my vocabulary is stronger than the majority of people my age. I'm able to see through the platitudes and nonsense we all hide behind, and for all of those reasons people seem to think I'm some kind of wunderkind. a novelty. a rare specimen of an otherwise oafish and misunderstood breed. 

that, or I am in need of being saved. Another urge people have when I talk about my past is to try and help me somehow. They offer the same advice as dozens before them, and any sympathy they offer tends to irritate me more than anything. I don't need or want your sympathy. 

You know why I don't check all of the 22 year old man boxes? Because I'm not a 22 year old man. The dysphoria I experience more and more continues to hammer that fact home, and I can't convince myself entirely that I will ever be viewed as anything but a man. 

but that's your (the royal your) problem not mine. trying to explain something as abstract as dysphoria to the cisgendered masses simply isn't worth the energy. I had to learn the hard way that you can't save everyone, and in a similar vein you can't educate everyone. let them stay in their caves of ignorance, and let me move closer and closer towards the light of understanding.