"Is that a boy or a girl?"

That question. It was like my heart stopped beating.

"A boy. What kind of ugly chick has a haircut like that?"

My face burned red as I tilted my head down in embarrassment. I hated this. I hated being me.

Someone made a humming sound. "Are you sure? I have her in my history class and her voice sounds oddly high for a boy."

Have you ever felt an emotion so strongly, it was like you couldn't feel anything at all? That was how I felt. That's how I've felt all my life, even since I was very young.

"Why do I have to sit on this side?" ten-year-old me whined to the teacher as I gazed longingly at the boys section of the cafeteria. "All my friends are over there!"

Mrs. Dodge bent down to my level to give me a condescending stare. "Paige, this is the girl's side. You have to sit with the other girls."

Girl's side. That didn't make any sense to me. Why would they separate the cafeteria into boys and girls? And why was I on this side while my friends all got to be on the other?

It bothered me, but it bothered me more than just because I had no one to talk to. It felt wrong in a way I wasn't yet capable of articulating. So I didn't say anything at all.

That became a common pattern in my life - not communicating how I was truly feeling. It's not that I didn't want to. I just didn't know how.

"I'm not going swimming without shorts and a shirt," I insisted to my aunt for the twelfth time as she held up a bikini she had bought for me.

"Honey, your body is beautiful! You don't need to cover it up with boys clothes. You're perfect just the way you are."

I felt sick. As much as I wanted to appreciate her words that were meant to be encouraging, all I felt was nausea.

My body wasn't beautiful and I didn't want it to be. I didn't want anyone to see it at all. Not even myself. That feeling would never go away no matter what she said to me.

Another few years passed and I had grown obsessed with a boy in my class. His name was Zach. He could lift the heaviest weights in gym class and was over six feet tall.

My friends insisted I had a crush on him. I thought they'd been right, that this is what it felt like to have feelings for someone. So I asked him on a date. He told me yes.

"Thanks for getting your mom to drive me," Zach said to me as we awkwardly stood in line for our movie tickets.

I nodded and offered a weak smile. It was so uncomfortable it was suffocating. But Zach didn't seem to think so, seeing as he reached down to intertwine our fingers.

That feeling. I got it again. My stomach curled and my body screamed in protest, but for a third time, I did nothing. I felt absolutely nothing for him, but I let him hold my hand.

Looking back, I think I just wanted to be him.

High school began and I felt more lost than I ever had before. It always felt like everyone was staring at me, judging me, hating me. Though it probably wasn't possible for anyone to hate me more than I hated myself.

That feeling stayed with me. Hatred, discomfort, confusion, fear. Sometimes it was just a little whisper in my ear, other times it came hurdling toward me like a tornado. Though it never went away completely. I would've given anything for it to go away.

"You want to cut off all your hair?" my mom repeated, sounding baffled. "But your hair is so long and pretty! It would be a sin to ruin it."

"It's just hair. It grows back," I told her with a shrug.

It took weeks of begging and a few tears, but eventually she complied after I told her I wanted to donate the hair. After that, I was so brave and nice. When I wanted to do it for myself, it was a sin.

The weight of my hair being gone was more of a mental relief than a physical one. For the first time ever, I looked in the mirror and saw something I liked. I saw me.

But that was only the beginning.