I wish I didn’t give a fuck, but I do.

I’ve always been very self-conscious. It’s why I try so hard.

As a rather loud-mouthed, know-it-all child, I learned what it meant to be seen as annoying and uncool. Particularly when it came to questioning cocky boys who were not used to a girl a) being smarter than them and more importantly b) calling them out when they were wrong.

As I got older, I became more and more conscious of how I acted among others and I became very good at going with the flow of any situation, blending in. Of course, my personality has always been rather bubbly and outgoing, but I gained a keen sense of others’ reactions towards me and learned how to cool it down when I sensed that someone else was annoyed with me.

It’s funny though, I always cared more about what the cool girls thought of me than the boys. Looking back now, this makes a lot of sense.

The fact that I (partially) found out about my intersex condition when I was 11 years old only increased my desire to be “normal.” I was big-boned and completely undeveloped among girls who had legitimate hips and breasts in 6th grade and I wanted desperately to be like them.

In addition to having PAIS, I was also born with a heart condition, meaning I went to doctors regularly as a child. Now, I realize that half of those visits were to the endocrinologist, but I suppose I always thought it was related to my heart and never really thought twice about it. It was after one of these visits when I revealed to my parents my desire to “grow up” like everyone else. It was that night that my parents came into my room to tell me that I would never have a period, would never be able to have children, and would have to take hormones in order to develop and keep taking them for the rest of my life. But I would have a “normal” sex life with my “husband” and be able to adopt. I don’t recall exactly what the explanation was, but it had something to do with “missing internal organs.” Little did I know then what that actually meant.

In any case, my self-consciousness is what caused me to deny my queer identity for so long. I knew from a young age that I was aroused by women, not men, but I vehemently denied these feelings to myself and particularly since the feelings weren’t that strong to begin with (thanks in large part to my lack of raging hormones, as well as the corrective surgery performed on me soon after birth), I thought I’d simply be able to suppress them forever. Moreover, I wanted so badly to be “normal” despite whatever the hell this thing was wrong with me.

In middle and high school, I thought boys were cute, but I suppose my being a “late bloomer” in combination with my aggressive personality caused a lack of reciprocation. In addition, I went to a magnet school (nerd alert!) with the same 100 people from 5th-12th  grades, so there wasn’t much dating going on to begin with.

As time passed, I wanted to know so badly what was actually going on “down there.” I knew that something was definitely not quite right from my own “exploration” but I wouldn’t dare ask my parents. I couldn’t believe that they would lie to me, so I just waited for the truth to come out. My mother would constantly try to talk to me about what I was feeling, but despite being extremely outgoing in my social life, I am very emotionally private, and never wanted to talk with her about it. She even told me how she went to a support group meeting for “girls like me.” Again, I so wanted to know what “like me’ actually meant, but couldn’t bring myself to ask. I had done some internet searching, but I guess I didn’t know enough about it to find what I was looking for.

I found out that I had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome from finding a support group (AISSG) newsletter on my kitchen counter when I was in 11th grade. I don’t know how or why it was just left there, but my parents weren’t home at the time, and I immediately ran up to my room to google it. I was so excited to finally know the truth.

As I read the support group website’s description of the condition, at first I was confused. I saw the x’s and y’s and didn’t understand where I, a GIRL, fit in to all of this. Then, the realization came over me. I was hit with a wall of bricks.

I had XY chromosomes. I was “intersex.”

Suddenly, I went from thinking I was just a girl with this thing wrong with her, to being thrust into a category of people I had never felt any connection to, people I had probably at some point participated in making fun of. I was a freak.

Needless to say, I was devastated. I cried in my room and wished my mother would come in to find me like that, but of course, never actually reaching out to her myself.

I knew they’d have to tell me eventually. So I just waited. It wasn’t until over a year later. After I had been accepted to colleges. My mom said she wanted to wait until that stress was over.

College is a time when most people explore their sexualities and generally figure out who they are. I, however, was terrified of sex. So instead, I just lived an asexual existence. It wasn’t very difficult. In fact, when I was trying to come to terms with everything, I thought that I might, in fact, be asexual. I had/have a very low sex drive, after all. Being asexual gave me the option of outwardly living my life within the heteronormative ideal. I never came out as asexual, however, and generally didn’t feel like I related that much to members of the asexual community I found online. When it came to everyone in my real life, I just let people assume what they wanted and just didn’t talk about it.

Even as I came to terms with the fact that I was queer, the thought of having a sexual experience with a girl freaked me out even more than having one with a guy did. The physical differences caused my condition at least might not be as noticeable to someone who didn’t have a typical set themselves.

Since figuring out my identity for myself, I’ve told a number of close friends about the condition (and everything that goes with it). More recently, came out to my larger group of friends as gay. I’ve finally been able to confirm what I felt inside by having some experiences with girls. At this point, I’m trying to find the right person, but it’s still really hard because I don’t think I can be intimate with someone without telling them. I just get too scared. It’s especially difficult, because I present on the feminine side and am told frequently how “pretty” I am. I just mean that no one would expect it looking at me, and so it has to come out of nowhere.

Besides wishing I had explored my sexuality sooner, I most regret not getting involved or interested in feminist or queer politics until recently. I suppose I never wanted to take those sorts of classes, or even discuss those sorts of things, for fear that someone would wonder how I fit into it all. Now that I’ve become at least somewhat more open about things (and no longer am in college), I’m trying to get more involved with the community.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be completely out, about everything, to everyone. All my relatives, my large group of family friends, all of the friends I have from home and from college, even everyone I’m “friends” with on facebook to whom I haven’t spoken since middle school. I occasionally get the urge to post on my wall: “I’M INTERSEX!” just to see what would happen. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I will ever be strong enough to do that.

I wish I didn’t give a fuck, but I do.