Hopefully, my readers are old enough to remember being shown the "puberty tape"  in elementary school. Hopefully you giggled and whispered to your friends. Hopefully you felt excited or nervous about the changes you were about to go through. Hopefully you didn't react the way I did. 

I never questioned my so-called femininity as a kid. I did prefer to play with boys, and I had an aversion to typically feminine clothing, but otherwise I was a "normal girl." My family is traditionally Lutheran, and pretty much denounce anything to do with the LGBTQ community. I didn't even know what a gay person was until the age of eight. 

But that all changed in the spring of 2014. I was in the fourth grade. One day we were split into two groups, a boys group and girls group, and sent off to separate rooms to watch these videos about our "development." Of course, I was sent with the girls. The teacher dimmed the lights and put in the video meant for the girls. While the others giggled and whispered, I stared into the screen as if I was watching a cold-blooded murder. I must have looked like I'd just seen satan or some shit. The tape ended and I wanted to cry so bad, but I only shed one tear. I would not make myself look like a freak. So we got in line and my friends asked me if I was going to buy a bra. I didn't want to, in fact it terrified me, but I said I would. That night, I went to the mall to buy a training bra. I was so ashamed and scared and embarrassed, I felt awful. I ended up with four of them and soon found out what I could really do with them- bind. It fixed my problems at the moment, but womanhood was about to run me over a second time. It wouldn't be the last.