Construction of Me

Jun 03, 2026

I’ve been ruminating on the disappointment of this haircut.

I guess that was just scratching the surface.

It’s different than I expected. Not terrible. I thought I just needed to make it through the whole “give it a little time to adjust and you’ll feel better” period, but I never did.

It feels bottom-heavy. Too bob-like. Too blunt. Too feminine in a way I cannot explain without sounding dramatic.

People can tell me it looks fine. They can tell me it’s cute, soft, flattering, whatever word they think will soothe me. But the problem isn’t really whether the haircut is objectively bad.

The problem is that when I look in the mirror, I do not feel like myself.

Or maybe more accurately: I’m realizing I don’t know what “myself” is supposed to look like anymore.

This sent me spiraling into over-analyzing everything.

Suddenly I’m not just looking at a haircut. I’m looking at the entire construction of me.

And I hate how overwhelming it all feels.

I have been losing weight. My chest is less full now, and that has made me feel a way I did not expect.

Part of me grieves the fullness I had before. I can look at old photos and think, damn, my boobs looked good.

And at the exact same time, I find myself wanting my chest to look flatter in shirts.

I’ve been looking at minimizing bras. I’ve been thinking about compression (though realistically, I know that sensation would probably be a sensory nightmare for me). My mind has been wandering, thinking about whether taping or more drastic things would make me feel more at ease.

It’s scary to feel this way toward my body when I haven’t before.

Yet somehow when I look at old photos, I miss something.

Not necessarily the body itself.

Maybe the certainty.

Maybe the version of me who knew how to look desirable, for whatever that means.

That is the part that makes this so hard to explain. It is not as simple as wanting bigger boobs or to be flat-chested. It is not as simple as wanting to be feminine or wanting to be masculine. It is not as simple as body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, heartbreak, weight loss, chronic illness, neurodivergence, queerness, or aging.

It is all of them.

Woven together so tightly I cannot always tell which thread I am pulling.

There are things on the feminine side that make me uncomfortable now. Dresses (I mean they kind of always did, but even more so now). Skirts (same thing). Certain necklines. Anything that makes me feel like I am being perceived by men when I don’t want to be visible to them.

Strange that I went from push-up bras and piercings to feeling like this.

Yet there are things on the masculine side that make me uncomfortable too.

I do not want to wear a suit or a buzz cut. I do not want to look like a “man.” I do not want to erase all softness. I do not want to become some social media approved version of androgyny that only seems to work if you are tall, thin, toned, and genetically blessed with the right kind of jawline.

Gender feels less like an instinct and more like a social system I have been expected to perform. I understand intellectually what society deems acceptable.

But knowing does not mean it feels natural.

Too feminine, and I feel exposed. Too masculine, and I feel false. Too anything, and I feel like I’m either performing or invisible.

There is a fine, moving line between comfort and dysphoria for me.

I can miss being pretty and not miss performing femininity.

I question why grief is present.

Do I miss being pretty?

Maybe that is not quite right.

I miss feeling wanted.

For a long time I confused them for the same thing.

I look at old photos of myself sometimes. Long pastel hair. Makeup. Dresses. A version of me who knew how to be conventionally beautiful, or at least knew how to approximate it well enough.

And I can look at those photos and think, honestly, wow. I was really pretty.

There is grief in admitting that.

Because I do not want to go back to existing that way, but I miss what that version of me had access to.

I think part of me is also grieving her because she was the version of me Lauren wanted. At least at first.

That is a hard thing to admit— that heartbreak is intertwined in all this.

Not just because I miss her. Not just because divorce rearranged my molecules. But because Lauren changed the way I understand attraction, desirability, and myself.

I thought I was mostly attracted to feminine women. Maybe that’s what was easiest at the time.

But then I met Lauren.

Lauren was more androgynous. More balanced. She had an energy I did not know I wanted until I wanted it so badly it became the archetype for my sense of attraction.

Perhaps it shifted.

Or maybe it clarified.

Either way, I cannot un-know it now.

The way I am drawn to androgyny. To masculine energy. To softness that is not feminine in the expected way. To women who carry themselves with a kind of groundedness that feels safe and electric at the same time.

It makes my own presentation more complicated.

Because now I lean more soft masc. Tomboy. Comfortable. Practical. I do not feel pulled toward soft femme anymore. I do not want to reclaim dresses and lipstick. Maybe I will add colorful money pieces back into my hair someday because color still feels like me, but I do not think I am trying to return to femininity.

I am trying to find a presentation that feels like it belongs to my body.

But there is fear there.

Because in queer spaces, I often feel like the way I present is undesirable. Invisible even.

Like loudness is celebrated more. When femininity is pink and bubbly. When androgyny is thin, angular, confident, and model-esque. Like certain things are only accepted within narrow limits.

Sometimes queer attraction feels socially mapped already, and I worry I do not know where I fit inside it.

So where does that leave me?

Sometimes ‘soft masc for soft masc’ feels nearly non-existent.

If I become more myself, do I become less desirable to the people I desire?

This concept around relational belonging scares me.

It is about walking into a room and wondering whether anyone will see me and feel curious. Whether anyone will look twice. Whether the type of person I’m drawn to will recognize me and be drawn to me as well.

Part of what is underneath is the wound Lauren left.

Because when someone you love stops choosing you, it does not just break your heart. It makes you question the whole architecture of being wanted.

Was I desired because I was myself?

Or because I was performing the version of myself that made me easiest to desire?

What happens when that version no longer feels honest?

I do not want to go back; it would feel like betrayal.

But I miss knowing how to be wanted.

I miss the confidence that came from being legible.

I miss feeling like my beauty had a category.

I miss not feeling like I have to translate myself in a language that sometimes I don’t even understand.

Being in this particular meat-suit feels so damn difficult.

Because for some people, a body seems like a home.

For me, it feels like a never-ending project I was assigned for homework.

I do not mean that in a cutesy, funny way, even though I joke to get by. I mean sometimes I look at myself and genuinely think, I don’t belong in this body.

But I also do not know what body I’m supposed to be in.

It’s all alien to me.

Like everyone else seems to have some basic operating system for existing in a body, but somehow I wasn’t provided the instructions.

Maybe part of that is because my body has never existed simply.

It has been monitored, injected, attached to devices, swollen, exhausted, inflamed, hormonally unpredictable, and translated into numbers for more than a decade.

My life has revolved around blood sugar. Insulin. Sites. Tubing. Scars. Sensors. Alarms. Hormones. PCOS. Fatigue. Heat intolerance. Appetite. Water retention. A system I have to manage every hour of every day.

And because I am neurodivergent, I do not think I can separate that from the way I move through the world.

I have always been hyperaware of the tiny things. Socks. Sleeves. Necklines. How fabric touches my wrists. Whether a waistband presses into my stomach. Whether a bra band feels like suffocation. Whether hair touches my face wrong.

Clothes are not just clothes.

They are pressure. Texture. Temperature. Identity. Social signaling. Gender. Safety.

And everything I need feels contradictory.

I want loose clothes, but not shapelessness.

I want softness, but not feminization.

I want structure, but not restriction.

I want body hair, but I want it to look intentional.

I want to be seen, but only accurately.

Body hair can feel grounding in theory and still make me hyperaware of being judged in public.

Everything touches something deeper, for me at least.

I have always studied whether I look the way I feel.

That constant analysis is exhausting.

It isn’t insecurity.

It’s the math of being perceived, cost + tax.

Sometimes I envy people who can just put on clothes and leave the house without turning it into a referendum on who they are— I do not know how to do that.

I am crying and tired.

Over what started as something as small as a haircut.

Which turned into the sudden collapse of an already fragile scaffolding.

The haircut made all the moving parts more visible.

Gender.

Grief.

Sensory overwhelm.

Chronic illness.

Heartbreak.

The cumulative exhaustion of being perceived.

And all of it together made me question,

Who am I supposed to be now?