And so into this world I was born, a male expected to fit into a male role while the ideas of gender were being mashed through the blender. It seemed easy at first, as it is with most children. I wasn't born thinking about pink dresses, nor did I come into this world wondering what chrome parts I could buy on ebay for the Harley. I simply came in as pure being, with no concept of a feminine or masculine nature. And although there were certain innate tendencies and physiological aspects of me that characterised and differentiated my specific sex, I still had to adapt into the social climate I happened to arrive in. Indeed in many cases it's more accurately a case of survival, and fortunately that is a quality instinctive in all human beings.

So what was it about me, and no doubt many others like me? Why did I find the noisiness and brash temperament that sits easily with boys so uncomfortable? Did I have an imbalance in chromosomes? Did it have something to do with how close I was to my mother and that my father himself was not a very masculine male? Perhaps I just enjoyed the world of girls because I liked the toys they played with and could make no sense of cars and trucks and anything else that upset my ears.

I wasn't sure of why I was like the way I was, and then one day I realised that I might never know. It did make for an interesting life however, even if it did contain much confusion. When I began to accept that who I was - whoever that might be - had a place on this earth, and that it was okay to share my stories without needing to feel embarrassed by what some might call a peculiarity of nature, I started to emerge from that confusion and indeed accept my unexplainable nature.

Some of the issues I met with on my path through this labyrinth of gender identification were very hurtful. I remember as a teenager being fascinated by a couple of girls I noticed in bar. They were dressed in dark Gothic style clothing and had colours of purple and orange streaked through their wild and messy hair. I overheard the girls talking and could not shake the idea of introducing myself to them. Interestingly it may have even been some masculine quality in me that brought about the courage to approach these girls. Perhaps this is what I was displaying when they glared at me as if I had a growth coming out of my forehead and then told me in very crude terms to stay away from them. I felt like a little boy looking in a shop window who'd just been told that I could not have the item of my pure desire, and I walked away disconsolately. I was disturbed by the possible irony that these two girls had rejected me for the mere reason that I was male. And yet I struggled associating with males, especially those that possessed strong to excessive masculine traits, of which there were many in the particular landscape I'd grown up in. I considered the possibility that I might be gay but this I eventually came to understand was not so. Although I'd experienced some attraction towards men, it was more to do with the spirit of them and their wisdom rather than being drawn by anything sexual, and I did by that age understand what sexual desire felt like. I also had some gay friends whom I admired a lot but never in a sexual way.

Still, I was a boy. One with troubled thoughts leading to the idea that I was supposed to become a man in what was essentially still a man's world, even if that hard-stay of social (ir)regularity was slowly crumbling around me. I didn't seem to fit in though and because of the gender issues, I found it difficult to associate with women as well. And with a further twist to this confusing life of mine, when I did form deeper relationships with women, they often ended disastrously once it was discovered that I was not the hunter and gatherer they'd imagined I would be. Imagine that?

Nonetheless, with all these vexations I still had a will to survive and it was through this instinct that I finally came to terms with the fact that I would never come to terms with everything. I'd searched throughout my life for a masculinity that did not really exist in the true masculine sense, all the while trying to be a man and failing miserably. And when I started to understand that this most likely stemmed from a socially imposed regulation, I began to embrace the feminine aspects of myself. I started shamelessly picking flowers and arranging them on my kitchen table, I began forming close friendships with men that were similar to me, and best of all, I started to connect with women on a much deeper and purer level. They began to trust me because I'd begun to trust myself, sharing my feelings while listening to theirs and finally reaching that place where I could hear my heart knocking on the door of my soul with a voice that said; "it's okay little boy, you can come out now. It's okay to be you, no one really wants hurt you."