Hi and thank you! It's such a relief to be able to ask those kinds of questions and be met with understanding and reliable answers!
(Btw, I got registered to a local public library and can use their computers and therefore have some unsupervised Internet time
, I have no idea why I haven't thought about it sooner. And I was also offered to earn some money from time to time by playing and providing music accompaniment at some of their events, it's not much, but I'm really happy about it
)
Anyway, I have another topic I'd like to talk/vent about. It's not a big deal but I'd like to share some thoughts. About a month ago I talked with some of you about how I'm sometimes getting into uncomfortable situations because people assume I'm a boy, probably because of my short hair. I had been quite okay with it since then until it happend several times when I was with my family and you can imagine that they weren't happy about it. To be fair, their reaction could have been way worse but since then I've been hearing things like "you could have been such a beautiful girl if you wanted", "don't expect people to like you if you look like a man", "what have we done wrong that you want to rebel so much?", "I hope you aren't trans/nb or something, are you?" etc. quite often. I haven't care about it much, or at least tried not to, but now my mum went from words to action and said she won't let me go to a hairdresser anymore, that it's expensive is a fair point but she didn't have to add those other reasons. She says I have to keep my hair long, learn how to wear make up and get dress and high heels until the graduation ball (I have no idea why it's such a big deal for everyone...). I don't know what might happen if I resist and am not sure if I'll find the courage to do that.
I wrote at the beginning that it's not a big deal for me, but I guess that is some way it is when I'm thinking about it so much, but I don't understand why and don't like it. It wouldn't definitely hurt me to learn to act more "womenly" according to their expectations, but it might hurt both me and others if I keep getting into conflicts because of that.
I was thinking why am I much more focused on my appearance lately, because I've never been like that. Because of some health issues I haven't been able to do as much sport as I was used to - which was quite a lot, and I deeply miss it. So maybe if I can't "demonstrate" to others and myself, toughness and strength (which might seem quite funny as I'm quite tiny) physically like I was used to (and I admit that also liked to), I subconsciously want to do it by dressing, speaking or acting a certain way. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing or what to make of it.
It's kind of hard to effectively talk about it with my parents when they're "accusing" me of something that doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not trying to look like a boy nor am I trying to (not)look like a girl. I'm not trying to be or look like anything, or at least I think so. It's just that I'm more comfortable not having to care about who "should" go first into the door, if I'm perfectly shaved or if I'm being "meek enough". I don't know how it feel for other people, or how it would/should feel in general to take my appearance as somehow related to gender, but I don't think I feel any connection between that and it's therefore hard for me to understand some people's arguments and questions.
Honestly whenever I tried thinking about what being a women even means for me it was just an uncomfortable search in a void, maybe I grow up not knowing that even is something I could think about or I lack the terms and framework to do that. Most of my teenage life I've felt like some "traitor to womenhood" because I couldn't do some things "the right way", until I learned here and on other places that I can't even do those things wrong because there is no right way, I'm just doing them *my way*.
Well, this is a chaotic collection of thoughts rather than a question. I'm not asking for advice regarding my family, it's easy for me to blame everything on them but I know I can't and am trying not to. But if anyone has any thoughts, thinks I'm thinking about it the right/wrong way, or anything else, everything is appreciated. And also maybe some ideas how to let go and get over the discomfort of overgrown hair, since I got used to having it really short I find it quite distracting and uncomfortable when it grows longer.
Anyway, I also hope that those of you in the US are holding up okay, the elections time must be really stressful