I don’t have your average glow up story. I don't have your average childhood storybook ending. Everything dates all the way back to 6th grade when I first cut my hair. I felt different than before and not in a bad way. I felt more like...me I guess. I had finally been able to get my parents to let me cut my hair short like how I wanted. In 7th grade, I shaved the sides and back of my head. I felt even better then before and at the time I didn't know why.

Now I do.

Time skip to 9th grade, I have to stay after school for orchestra. Everyone is getting their suits and dresses sized and I was waiting for my mom to show up. I really hated how dresses looked on me, so I was super excited to get a suit to wear for concerts. The suit would fit my shoulders and legs far more than the dress ever could. Then my mom shows up and tells me “you are a girl, you have to wear a dress” You don’t know how devastated i was at hearing those words and more specifically one exact word, girl. One thing was for sure, that I hated being called a girl. At Park Hill’s band/orchestra room, I was forced to get sizing for the dress being uncomfortable the entire time then on our way out I saw bawling my eyes out. That day was the day I came out as Asexual to my parents purely on accident, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg for me. After being forced to wear a dress I looked absolutely horrid in, it just didn’t fit on my body. My shoulders being too broad, and my reflection told me “this isn’t you”, “you don’t fit this” “get out of the dress!”. At this point in time, I had begun to question my identity.

From here on out I had begun to realize that I didn’t feel right in the body I was born in; I always felt...off. Around summer of 10th grade, I finally thought that I had come to terms with myself. Whenever I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see a girl staring back, I saw a young boy. That is when I finally realized that inside I am a man and outside I’m a woman, but I truly don’t feel like either. I am something in between, not subjected to either side. Nothing ticks me off more than being referred to as a girl, but because of my parents, I have to at school and at work. With all this being treated as a gender I am not, it only fuels the depression I already have and makes my mental state worse and worse with each passing day. There is one thing I’m for sure about, though. I am no longer Caitlynn Porras; my name is Dimitri and I’m not a girl.

© Caitlynn. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.