Waking up after a night out always feels the worst, the sunlight hurts more than normally, every sound you hear makes you wince in pain, you can still taste the remnants of whatever you drank last in your mouth and the worst part of course, knowing that you've done things you wouldn't ever do when sober, but the only evidence is what your friends tell you and what they've recorded in video and text in the group chat. I open my eyes knowing that the sun will hurt me but instead of being blinded by it all I feel is a little discomfort in the twilight of my bedroom.

"Drunk me must have finally managed to remember to pull the blinds down."

I whisper with a hoarse voice. "Now where's my phone?" I ask myself as though I'd suddenly be able to summon an answer.

My phone dings. It's below me somewhere and I start looking under my pillows. Nothing.

It dings again, it's still below me. Maybe it's between the bed and the wall? Yes it must be there. I put my head against the wall, my eyes peering down into the darkness, only there isn't just darkness. There's a glimmer, a blurry message notification, I assume.

I stick my hand into the crevice, my fingertips barely able to reach the phone screen. I push it against the wall and slowly move it up until I can grab it with the other hand. 

I read my new notifications and see that it's nothing of importance, just the usual twitter discourse about whether something completely benign is racist/sexist/homophobic or whatever. I read some of the older notifications, "reliving" the partying I missed by getting so drunk I can't function anymore until I read something that was supposedly a quote from me directed towards a male friend:

"I'd fuck you if you'd just wear a cute dress."

I get sick, whether the alcohol remaining in my system or this quote set it off I don't know, but I run to the bathroom, stark naked, my bushy tail swinging after me, and regain my bearings on the mat in front of the toilet, I heave and nothing comes up besides weird noises from the depths of my throat.

I spend a good minute or two worshipping the porcelain God, before I get up and begin to wash my face with cold water. It must have been the alcohol.

I stare in the mirror, my green-grey eyes bloodshot, my fox ears turned down, my head in a vice. "Nick, why'd you have to drink so much?" I ask my reflection, rubbing my face. Two and a half years I've known the people who I get loose around. Two and a half years they've playfully ribbed me about my drunken behaviour.

My phone dings with a message notification. Someone's sent me porn. 

Femboy porn.

I'm sure that to them it is hilarious, waiting for me to admit I'm into feminine individuals of any gender so they could accuse me of being gay and laughing at me, as if it was 2004 and we were on Something Awful. 

But the thing is, I AM into feminine individuals of any gender. I just didn't want to admit it to myself until now. The picture I've been sent makes me so hot and bothered you could fry an egg on me.

I truly am a Pan, huh. 

I'm once more getting wasted with my friend group. But before I hit the point of no return from drunkenness, I come out to them. They all cheer and congratulate me. 

What I do not admit is that not only do I want to fuck and be fucked by femboys and trans women, I feel a strange kinship to them whenever I see them in porn. 

And I cannot decide whether I want to be them or be with them.

I awake with another headache, and a note stuck to my forehead. 

"Your friends think you're a femboy, figure it out."

Shit.

Hazy memories flood my conscious brain, drunken laughter, me accidentally switching into my feminine voice, things going quiet once the realisation hits them, a manic giggle from one of them. My cheeks flooding with blood before downing my drink, quickly paying and running home. Hastily writing the note before taping it to my forehead and downing a shot of absinthe.

I struggle to get up and stumble into the kitchen. My brain still spinning with the potential repercussions while I try to put water and a filter into the coffee machine and turn it on.

I immediately wince in pain as the machine turns on and loudly grinds the beans and the apartment fills with the scent of freshly ground coffee while I stumble into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.

I look at myself in the mirror and I tell my image. “Gods you look horrible Nick.”, my ears turned down, my eyes blood-shot and soul-less, my hair messy and dull. It almost hurts to look at my thin, barely masculine body. I finish up in the bathroom and grab myself a cup of almost coffee, as I like to call it.

I sit down at my desk, thinking about the note as I sip my sweetened and milky morning brew. My brain circling around the one big question:

“Am I a femboy? Or am I trans? Or am I genderfluid? Or am I something else entirely?”

As I ponder these questions, long suppressed and ignored memories flood back into the forefront of my mind, like the many times I thought to myself “I would be a really cute girl” late at night, how I always found myself to have an easier time hanging out with girls rather than guys, how much I’d like to wear dresses and makeup, how much I hated getting haircuts but do it anyways because I feel like I have to rather than as a decision made out of my own will and more, an almost unending and overwhelming flood of emotions hits me and I curl up on my chair.

I feel my heart pounding in my ever more tightening chest. I feel as though I am about to cry and yet no tears nor sobs wrench themselves out of me as one last thought echoes within the void that once was my gender identity:

"I've never been a guy."

I stay upon the chair as a sad curled up pile of skin and hair for a small eternity, hugging my own tail against myself for comfort, burying my face within its fur as though to hide myself from the world.

Eventually however I have to get up, I need to drink something, to eat something and to take care of myself. I feel tired and am unsteady on my own two feet. My coffee is cold, the world once more dark and my phone is dead. 

"How long did I…" I start asking myself but stop myself as I cringe at the sound of my voice, I sound too masculine, too much like someone I'm supposed to be rather than who I really am and want to be. 

I sip my coffee as I go about making a sandwich for dinner, I don't feel hungry nor thirsty, just tired.

I quietly eat it before heading to bed to curl up once again, my thoughts still unable to be quiet and circling around my self discovery.

I should have figured it out sooner, shouldn't I? Do I really feel as though I never was a boy? If I really wanted to be a girl, would I doubt myself this much?

I've never doubted my own identity, but now I do so more than anyone ever should.

I text one of my best friends: "Laura, could you please come over tomorrow morning?" before rolling over and passing out.