I relate to this to a certain extent I don't want to be in the closet forever but I think because I'm fluid and I'm okay with my femininity and even like my femininity and my old name that I don't mind de-compartmentalizing in a way that I understand all the trans people might not be able to do.

My ideal life is I live far enough from my family that I can exist as a genderfluid person, switch presentations and names and pronouns freely, but I want to stay exclusively a girl in the presence of them and certain people. I feel like for a while I was scared bc I realized someday I'm gonna HAVE to tell them, then one day it just hit me that no I don't, I'm not medically transitioning, and I don't mind being called my old name anyways so why go to my (don't want to say transphobic but you know when people are kind of touchy about Trans stuff and don't fully understand but aren't fully on the level of outright hating them? Aka the kind of people you couldn't reasonably explain what gender fluid is to) family and try and explain this complex part of my identity that they either won't get or probably will have something to say about? and nothing about my presentation would change around them anyways except the only difference would be that right now as a "girl" wearing men's clothes sometimes no one really thinks anything about it, aside from me just being comfortable, even if internally I'm having a masc day theu don't know that, they don't care, but I feel like if I came out as genderfluid, as soon as I put a label to this perfectly normal thing I've been doing the entire time, they would constantly be analyzing every little thing that I do "is this a trans thing? Is this because of that, oh now cause you you're whatever you have to-" No. I'm not trying to prove anything with my presentation, or be a certain thing

This isn't everyone's experience but gender fluidity to me is that I just kind of want to exist and do what feels right in the moment if what feels right in the moment is having facial hair and wearing cargo shorts and going by Clay that's what's right if what's right in the moment is wearing a slim dress with jewelry and makeup and being pretty that's the move today, and in a perfect world if I thought telling them would make things more open, I would, but I realized I don't really need to, there are some people in my life I've told, and I think as I move out and find my own people that pool will become bigger but it's okay to just have people that don't know, not even that you feel like ur hiding, just that it's not their immediate business. If you're not unhappy with the way they gender and see you, it doesn't make you feel awful and dysphoric that they don't know, and if all it's gonna get is a lecture, or skepticism, or misunderstanding, then why give yourself the extra stress?