Stop!! calling!! me!! he!! (please i really really dont like it) (use 'they' instead, thank you very much)

    If you want to really mess up my day for some reason, there's one reliable, quick, and simple method: refer to me with 'he.' It's not like you'll stick out of the crowd or anything by doing it, since basically everyone else uses those words on me almost instinctually. I guess people just assume it's the right thing to do---because I'm presumably a guy, so presumably 'he' is the way to go. I kinda get it. We rely on assumptions all the time to make our lives easier, to fill in our knowledge gaps. But I'm not a guy. And while sometimes, getting assumptions wrong is fine, for me, this one can seriously hurt.

    It happens way too often for me to count, and always brings a sort of miserable feeling you don't really get anywhere else---spacing out, being pulled away from whatever's happening then and there to replay that moment in your head. That brutal reminder that even if you think one way, people will still see you as a boy. Perfect for shutting you up if you ever thought you were having a good time.

    

    It's also by extension a reminder of why they see me as a boy, a highlighter for all those things which I already detested about myself on my own. What other people see of me becomes how I see myself. When I take a look at things like my voice, my clothes, my appearance, and the people I hang out with, I can't help but understand why people see me this way, when  all I see sometimes in the mirror is a boy.  How can I blame them, when everything about me signals to people that 'boy' is exactly where I belong? What else are people supposed to assume when they see me?

   

    And whenever people inevitably jump on this assumption and misgender me, it's not like I even dispute them on it either. Usually I'm too spaced out, awkward, and nervous to correct people. No wonder why it keeps on happening.     

    These are the thoughts and moments that keep me up crying at night, trying desperately to somehow lose focus, to somehow stop perceiving myself. I tell myself that this is how it's always gonna be, that this perception of me will never change, no matter how hard I try---others will always see me as a guy, I'll always see what they see, and I'll always hate myself for it. When everyone perceives me as someone else, it really makes me wonder if the real me, the non-binary me, is there at all, behind the layers upon layers of things that signal the presence of someone else. Maybe all that I am is a hologram, a useless shell acting on the behalf of a soul who doesn't want it, who doesn't exist anywhere but their own mind. 

    

    All that misery over the misplaced usage of just a single one-syllable word.

     

    Hopefully, someday, those dreaded assumptions about me will go away, whether due to me casting off the final vestiges of masculinity clinging on to me, or from peoples' perceptions of me changing on their own (or through constant drilling by me). To those who've somehow rewired their brain to see through my masculine shell, to make me feel like I'm really there for some time, thank you. Maybe eventually, that can be the norm, not the exception. But until that far-off world phases into existence, I'll have to keep holding on, wherever I am, even if I don't know where that is.