Supernuova
Chapter 1. My Prelude
The Setback
3 Sept 2024
Between the last page and this one, the comic kind of presents it like I went years without thinking about it and then got right to work on figuring things out, but in reality, the first two panels of this entry represent thought that happened in the background over those 8 years, and over a few more focused sessions over the final couple years of that period.
But I set it chronologically at the time that I watched the particular video this entry is about. The title, thumbnail, and appearances of the people involved are all made up to convey the general vibe of the video without calling out the specific people involved, since I don't think any of it was done maliciously, it was just wrong.
I don't think the comic is going to actually address the aftermath of this, at least not any time soon, but I think I can better summarize what happened in writing.
Basically, I had determined that I was definitely not a cis man, but I wasn't sure if I was a woman or some other gender, and so I was trying to figure that out. A lot of the hangup around labelling myself as a woman came from the fact that I had been excluded from girlhood/womanhood my entire life, and so I did feel distinctly othered from the label, and like I wasn't allowed to be part of it. So when I initially phrased the question back in 2015 as "Do I identify as a woman?," the answer was no. I, at the time, did not feel like the label "woman" identified me.
So that initial session of questioning, slowly fizzled out with the idea that I'm probably actually nonbinary, and since I was already used to he/him pronouns and didn't see transitioning in any way as a real possibility, I figured nothing would externally change and I'd just keep all of these thoughts in my own head.
But over time, and especially over the course of 2022-2023, my understanding of gender improved, and I realized that there was a difference between my gender and what label I was used to, and so I started to wonder whether the label of "woman" made sense for me. I ended up simplifying it as if there was a spectrum from masculinity to feminity, and if you divided it into four even sections, which let's call very masculine, kinda masculine, kinda feminine, and very feminine. I decided I was somewhere in the "kinda feminine" section, but I wasn't sure where (I don't even know now that I wouldn't put myself in the very feminine section, but it's such an oversimplification, I don't think that necessarily matters).
Again, I was confused between how I was/always had been and how I wanted to be. So I ended up going back and forth between thinking maybe I'm nonbinary vs definitely being a woman. until eventually I watched this video, and I walked away thinking I must be nonbinary because that would explain why I didn't notice as a kid, since I didn't know it was an option.
There was a good few months after this where I did fully accept that I was nonbinary and not a woman, and I have a few specific memories during this time of thinking of myself in this way.
But slowly my understanding of gender improved and I ended up deciding that the label "nonbinary woman" worked best for me. I am comfortable simplifying it to just "woman" depending on the audience, and I do consider myself a woman, but there's also a bit that I feel if best described as nonbinary.
Honestly I'm still not entirely sure whether I truly am a nonbinary woman or if it's just a label that currently helps me get over when something makes me feel masculine, but I decided there's no use trying to understand it any further until I get further along in my transition and can look back on a few years of living full-time as a woman and see how I feel about it then.
Clearly at this point, my proverbial egg had many cracks in it, but in the next part we'll finally get to the night that I fully hatched.