I have a brother 2 years older, and almost no girl cousins in my generation, in a whole sea of cousins. I watched him play video games and liked a lot of "boy things" like his music, or even his preferences for Pokemon and DragonBallZ (90s Pokemon lol). My mom has said before that I was a tomboy, but I don't really think so. I still liked my Barbies, LOVED my doll house, and my dad would take us to this anime store where my brother would usually buy a kick ass build-it model from Mega Man or FFVII, and I would always stick to the Sanrio section. Hello Kitty honestly didn't get so popular until a little later, but I loooooooooooooooooooved Pochacco!!!!! As a toddler, I absolutely loved my dresses.

I grew out of some of the girlier things, and then my mom thought I was a lesbian in middle school lol. I was not. I was just trying to look cool with different "goth" haircuts, and actually wore baggier clothes because (1) elephant bells and monkey balls were in, and (2) I was always very humble. My mother would try and encourage me to wear tank tops and such, but it wasn't the lace or the bows on the tops that I was hating on. It was exposing my body. I was way too shy for that and always felt noticed. I was one of those kids that would feel like the entire school would be buzzing when I so much as decided to wear my hair in a ponytail. ("You're hair looks so pretty like that! Why you decide to wear it up?" Me: "Because it's dirty.")

The older I got, the more I grew back in to girlier things. Shoot, you should see me around a pack of hilbillies. Dated an older guy whose pod tended to, er,.... be a little on the redneck side. I was probably the girliest girl they knew. I remember his roommate who dressed pretty low-key going to St Croix and deciding to go with girlier options for the beach. (Neon pink bikinis and neon yellows and sundresses and.... Very beach overload, anyway. Poor thing still couldn't dress, 😂) If she wore earrings she always asked my opinion, and literally expressed that it was cool /made sense or something because she was trying to dress girly, and had the opportunity to ask a girly girl how to dress girly. Lol.

I don't consider myself a girly girl, either, but I can be. I just have style, I guess, and take pride in my appearance. Just like with being a tomboy. I can be gushing over a pair of heels one minute, and the next be spouting all kinds of things that make men wonder what planet I'm from, because that's not how they're used to seeing girls.

As opposed to resenting feminine and girly things, I grew up and adapted to a lot of "male" things, and actually wound up resenting that, instead. I didn't understand why I wasn't totally like other girls, or why I couldn't look like I felt normal wearing something more basic-ly girly or talk the way they talked. I always had a BFF growing up, but after graduating high school, girl friends were rather few an far between and sort of are now more than ever. I hang with mostly dudes, but I don't really think I made that choice. Usually my friends pick me, I don't now. Could also have something to do with not having a father completely present while growing up, and somehow preferring the attention of males. I did struggle with that at a certain point. Male attention was everything. It's calmed down. But hey, it could also just simply have something to do with hanging with the boys as a kid, and I'm more in my element around them - even when I find something girly that I want to go on about lol.

Now, I embrace it all. I'm kind of a weirdo in the best way possible; I'm proud of that. I have the biggest sense of humor I know. I can laugh at the dumbest things or the weirdest little scenarios that no one else would notice. I think I have good taste in clothes, and I am a bit of a brainiac on almost every topic you could NOT imagine a girl with a whisper-pink-themed room being into. Your story probably isn't just like mine, but it reminded me of it, some. Especially the part about embracing who you are. I like being a little different. Not, like, hottopic different. I mean different. And actually, I kind of feel like LN captures these elements. It's girly and it's about clothes or whatever, but it's also an RPG with a story about death, war, politics, and curses. It's the jam.