you need to get weirder

28 Apr, 2026

growing up, i always felt like the odd one out. thinking back on it, i believe this feeling went beyond the undiagnosed autism. i fear writing about it may sound like i am and have always been trying too hard to be unique, but honestly, there's nothing i'd like more than to blend in.

or at least so i thought.

it's been 5 years since i started my transition. realizing i'm nonbinary¹ was, of course, life changing - as said to close friends at the time, it was a step towards finally being myself, without all the pressure of society dictating how i should behave, who i should be. liberating is a good word to describe the whole process, from finally accepting something i kind of already knew, to deciding the changes i wanted to be part of this transition process.

then something unexpected happened: by stepping outside of a box, i accidentally put myself inside another one. hrt changed my voice, my body, made the cashier at the convenience store start calling me boss. welcome changes, all of them, but i was still giving into the need to pass as something i wasn't.

now, 5 years into my transition and 2 years into a proper asd diagnosis, i should have started to feel a bit more like myself - but i don't. and more frequently than not, a little voice in my head repeats the same words, over and over again: you need to get weirder.

this urgent need to keep changing is why i started purposely revisiting childhood and adolescence feelings. i filled up a couple of journals with memories, wonderings, remembered who i used to be and asked myself what has changed. lo and behold, the answer is nothing much has changed at all. but i did write a lot about how growing up in a catholic school, despite not being from a catholic or particularly religious family myself, taught me to hide my real emotions and opinions in favor of blending in. being different was almost a punishment back then, both to ourselves and to the adults who raised us. so, what i once thought was a natural feeling was actually a fear - i was, and still am, afraid of standing out.

so, this blog is part of a personal project where i try to learn how to be myself. it's for losing the fear of talking about the things i love, about my weird relationship with gender, about my deepest and silliest feelings. it's for writing about the times i didn't blend in and how it didn't matter much at all.

"you do not have to be good. you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
wild geese, by mary oliver

#thoughts