This backstory is going to be long, bit please humor me…

40 years ago I, a young boy, dreamed of having kids, my wedding day, holding babies. I Absolutely loved satin dresses. My favorite color was pink. The list goes on and on… Now, this is totally okay, but then it meant I was an evil perverted “f**”. I wasn’t. Boys were mean, disgusting and every time they found out about any of my traditionally feminine passions, would gang up and beat the tar out of me.

I’ve always been a massive guy, I could take two or three guys easily but they seemed to know that and came in droves.

The bullying didn’t stop there, unless physically attacked I would not fight back so everyone felt perfectly safe picking on me and did any chance they got.

When I hit puberty, quite young, I was absolutely disgusted with my body. I’ve never figured out if it was some inherent thing or if it was some loathing of all the males who hated me with fervor. I wished I was a girl so badly. I would even steal pads from my mom and wear them just so I could have a hidden morsel of femininity.

When the 90 were in full swing it became apparent that not every feminine boy was a “f**”. If they were not gay, then it was much worse… They were a child molester dressing up in drag to get access to little girls to molest and r***. Still young myself, knowing I wasn’t gay this clearly meant I was going to grow up and be the worst monster of them all. I tried to kill myself on a few occasions, but I was too pathetic to even die right.

I eventually “moved on” and became a functional adult. Got married, had a boatload of kids, own a beautiful home in the suburbs, the whole story.

I’m now a huge, very masculine dude with a little girl who never was allowed to have a childhood inside me screaming to be let out.

This brings me to my reason for this confession. I was playing fortnite recently sporting a female avatar and a gender neutral name and ended up in a game with two teenage girls. They were giggling and joking and since I didn’t have my mic on, they just assumed I was a girl.

Every time they referred to me as “she” or “her”, I could feel the most amazing rush of being finally acknowledged as who I really am. I cried. There is no way to express the euphoria of being stomped down and suppressed for over 40 years only to without even a moment of hesitancy be seen, even if it was a mistake.

We became Fortnite friends and we’ve chatted through text a lot and they finally asked if I was a girl. Well, everything in me felt like it died in an instant… Then, despite massive guilt… I lied.

Or did I?

It is now acceptable to identify with the true you instead of the body you were cursed to be born in.

I’ve played with them a few times since and we get along fabulously. We never have and never will exchange real names or other personal info. When I am not riddled with guilt for being a middle aged man lying to hang out with a couple of teenage girls, it is the most free and wonderful I can ever remember feeling.