5 minutes reading time
For most of my 31 years, I’ve treated this body like a maintenance assignment. Don't get it twisted: I don’t hate the hardware. The physical form—the lungs, the limbs, the skin—it works. It’s the arbitrary, exhausting metadata society tagged onto me at birth that feels like a corrupted config file I can’t delete.
I cut my hair only when it hits my eyes. I drag a razor across my face only when the mustache starts interfering with my food intake. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a "man." I see a biological vehicle. An appliance that requires periodic servicing just to keep the check-engine light from blinking. There’s zero aesthetic attachment. It’s just... there.
Recently, I realized this missing layer of "gendered vibes" isn’t a bug. It’s a core feature of my operating system.
I’ve come to understand I identify as non-binary. More specifically, agender. My realization came downstream of some serious lag in the "milestone" department. I was a virgin until I was 29. When I finally lost it to my wife, the floodgates didn't just open—they disintegrated.
That intimacy was the first real data point I had that wasn't filtered through social performance. It turns out, I’m pansexual. But more importantly, peeling back the layer of mandatory heterosexuality broke the seal on everything else. Once I stopped caring about who I was "supposed" to love, I realized I also didn't give a damn about the gender I was "supposed" to be. There is no inner man in here. Just a quiet, persistent None of the Above.
When people get misty-eyed talking about "being a man" or "manhood," my brain doesn’t light up. There’s no inner click. There’s just a blank screen.
A few years back, somebody slapped an ADHD diagnosis on me. Recently, we added Autism to the tab. AuDHD, if you want the internet's favorite acronym. I spent my life avoiding hospitals—especially for mental health—because I figured I could just "logic" my way through the static. Learning about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria has been the "Aha!" moment from hell. That neurodivergent combo fundamentally warps how I process identity. My brain doesn't just grab the broad category of "Man" and file myself away happily. It looks at the raw data. How I move. What I wear. How I relate to the exhausted mammals around me. If the scattered data points don't consistently scream manhood, I simply don’t feel like a man.
And then there's the grooming. It isn't laziness. Well, maybe a bit, but mostly it's a mix of sensory priorities and executive dysfunction. If an action doesn't serve a clear, immediate physical purpose, my brain refuses to assign it value. Looking "more like a man" just isn't a strong enough reason to override the sheer annoyance of itchy collars or time-consuming morning routines.
RSD is the emergency brake. It’s a paralyzing fear of social friction. To my brain, standing out feels like a physical threat. So, what’s the safest, lowest-energy build for a person who violently hates attention? The "cis-male" costume. It’s the ultimate "Grey Man" strategy. Neutral clothes. Neutral stance. Zero grooming effort. I’m not "being a man"; I’m just using the default skin because the custom ones attract too many aggro mobs.
To the outside world, I’m a conventional guy. A husband. A father. A product leader in Coimbatore trying to survive the next sprint. I’ve defaulted to the most invisible version of myself. Looking like a man is a strategy. It isn't an identity. It’s just a way to navigate a society obsessed with clear little boxes, without triggering crushing anxiety.
I don’t recommend this strategy. It’s a survival tool to buy time while I figured out what the hell was actually happening inside my own head.
I have a wife and a young daughter. My primary KPI is her stability. People, usually those without a family, ask why I don’t "transition" or change my look. The truth is, I don't even want to adjust the external UI anymore. I am used to this mask. As far as the world cares, I am just a cis man. And honestly? I don't care enough about the world to bother changing it. Pushing front-end updates just to make a point sounds exhausting.
I don't owe the world an external performance of my internal truth. Neither do you.
Coming out to myself hasn't changed the daily grind. I still make breakfast, do the school drop-off, and sit in meetings that could have been emails. But the internal weather has shifted. I never actually felt like I was "failing" at being a man, because I never really engaged with the performance. But the quiet confusion of trying to decipher a social language I didn't speak is finally gone. I’m a highly functional human who was just running the wrong damn script.
Identity isn’t always about the clothes or the pronouns. Sometimes, it’s just about finally understanding the OS you were handed at birth, and giving yourself permission to stop debugging a program that was never supposed to run in the first place.