There are some things most people take for granted... some things that others have been denied. So many people around the world are born one way, and know that's the way they should be. Males born males who feel male, females born females who feel female...

Then there are people like me, born one way, but feel another, completely different, way... I was born a single gender, but... neither gender has ever felt right. Thinking about being just male or just female doesn't click... but... the thought of being a herm... being both at once...

I don't know if it's even possible to have gender reassignment surgery to be hermaphroditic. I don't know if there are any doctors out there who would do that. Many things finally hit home yesterday, last night... and for the first time in years, I cried myself to sleep. The first time was when I wanted to be a chakat... though I've since gotten over that... but now... I'm convinced... I'm a herm born into the wrong body. I've never dressed overly feminine, nor overly masculine... but all I could envision last night was myself, looking feminine, wearing a woman's-cut tuxedo, with that small bulge that only comes from being male... and I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I reached out for something I knew wasn't, and couldn't, be there... desperately hoping that I could close my fingers around that apparition and make it reality...

I go around wearing gender-neutral clothing pretty much all the time. Jeans and a T-shirt. I don't want to wear panties, but I don't want to wear boxers... I wear briefs... because they're somewhere in the middle, perhaps? I honestly don't know... I want to look feminine, and yet be hermaphroditic, and every single time I envision myself that way, I cry because I know almost without a doubt that I can never achieve that.

I know it seems like I'm whining, I'm complaining, a lot... but I just recently started admitting to myself who and what I am. Even a week ago, I was a single-gendered, white, upper-middle-class American, and in basically every respect had life handed to me on a silver platter... and suddenly I'm fully realizing that I'm a pansexual hermaphroditic furry buried under all that...

Writing it out helps somewhat... reading your responses, knowing you all care, helps as well... I'm... I'm glad there are those who care for me. I worry about what my friends and family would think if I told them. I nearly told my mother... but... I'd heard too many horror stories to bring myself to do it. Maybe... maybe some day I can tell her... but I don't know when that day will come.

Thank you, all of you, who have given me support... you've made life worth living in spite of all this. I used to have horrible bouts of depression... thoughts of suicide... but you've all kept it away... even if it's a family of friends, I feel as though I've found a real family here in the fandom. That's reason enough to keep on living.

Tail high, all of you.

Chakat Swiftrunner