I spent the last third of 2011 and all of 2012 obsessively thinking about being butch and/or transgender.  I read a bunch of books.  I thought about my childhood.  I thought about my adolescence.  I examined by behavior.  I examined my material closet and my mental closet.  I went around in circles chasing my tail.  I ended up back where I started, but not quite in the same place.  Everything looked vaguely different.  I’d like 2013 to have more clarity than the muddle of the last two years.

I always thought I was a boy, even though I was told I was a girl.  This got paraphrased in my brain as “I want to be a boy”.  This sentence repeated itself so many times in my head over the years that it became background noise and I stopped listening to it.  I am listening again.  Instead of ignoring it I am saying “Of course I always wanted to be a boy because I am a boy”.  I experience this the clearest when I am with my dog Gracie, who can not talk me out it.  She loves me just the way I am.  A boy and her dog.