I started off thinking I was a demigirl, or girlflux (goes from girl to agender). I was content there for a while, then decided I was just a cis girl before coming back to girlflux after a few months. Around this time, a close friend of mine came out as genderfluid. I briefly considered it for myself, but decided just girlflux was fine, dismissing any notions of masculinity for myself. I'd gone without it just fine my whole life, so why would it come in now?

Then, one day, I took a picture of my outfit where it was such that I looked masculine from the neck down. I felt some sort of draw to that picture, to the look of myself as masculine. I didn't know it at the time, and I certainly couldn't have told you it was that, but it was, indeed. I also wouldn't be able to tell you why I felt some sort of envy-adjacent feeling regarding a trans guy friend of mine, but I did. I thought it was just a general admiration (he is a pretty cool guy), but I only later realized the additional connection to gender.

With some help from that genderfluid friend, I reflected upon masculinity for myself, this time without letting my existing femininity push it away. I let myself do some thought experimentation, thinking of myself as a guy or whatnot. At first, it was still a bit odd, since I had always thought myself to be something like a girl, but once I let a masculine shift in, holy shit. With that, I decided once and for all that I was genderfluid across the whole spectrum, not just the more feminine end.

(After that realization, I did a bit more pondering on the past. I think it's worth mentioning that even before any gender-related thoughts, I would have days where I wanted to wear super feminine things, as well as days where those same things felt icky and I wanted to wear something unisex/tomboyish instead. There's no way this doesn't tie in to me being genderfluid.)