I'm 35 years old, and I've been identifying as nonbinary for about ten years. But, well before that, when I think back to being 18 years old, there were some signs that I was nonbinary early on. I want to share one of those signs with you.

When I was in university, right out of high school, I used to wear a wide variety of clothes - really feminine, really masculine, whatever. But then, some days, I would put on my feminine clothes and look in the mirror and be like, "Why do I look like I'm wearing a costume?" It would be so distressing. I would change out of my clothes and take all the clothes out of the closet, and I would keep changing outfits until there was a huge mountain of clothes on my bed. It was panic-inducing, like an anxiety attack.

This happened enough times that eventually, I went to K-Mart or whatever and bought two pairs of black jeans and five white t-shirts. When I would have my stressful getting dressed moments, I would put on my ~neutral outfit~.

I told this to my therapist at the time and she was like, "Wow, what a great coping strategy that you developed!" Of course, she didn't mention anything about being nonbinary. That wasn't a popular word back in the day. We used to say “genderqueer”. But when I look back on that time now, it's very sweet. Like, how did I not know? Looking back on that memory today, I think, "Yep, I was always nonbinary." So there you go!