I haven’t written anything personal in a good long while, but every so often something will come along and pull the plug right out of my writing hole.

Strangely-worded introductions aside, today’s self-indulgent rambling was conceived in my brain at around 9 o’clock this morning, when I was idling in bed listening to music. A particular song just happened to come on – one by the wonderfully batty Kate Bush called ‘Room for the life’. I had heard it before many times, but I was suddenly intrigued by the lyrics, so I went and did a little reading about the song and people’s reactions to it. For the sake of contextualising, here is a short excerpt:

Hey there, you lady in tears

Do you think that they care if they’re real, woman?

They just take it as part of the deal

Lost in your men and the games you play

Trying to prove that you’re better, woman

But you needn’t get heavy with them

Like it or not, we were built tough

Because we’re woman

Kate herself said later about the song: “People thought that song was feminist, which disappointed me. It was actually saying we should go a bit easier on men because we are the ones with survival inside us, we carry the next generation, we have the will to keep going, we keep bouncing back.”

For some reason, I was suddenly quite moved by the song when I read this, which really surprised me, because my own femininity is not something I am very in touch with. I am not what you’d call a very maternal or nurturing person, either. There is a lot of mention in the song of a woman’s power stemming from her ability to bear children, which I agree with – however, I don’t think it is the sole source of that power, because to say so would do a great disservice to those who cannot, or choose not to have children. So I think I can deduce that it has less to do with our biological status or functions as women, and more to do with our own beliefs of what it means to be female.

Until recent years, my own gender identity had long been a personal bone of contention for me; something I could never quite come to terms with. I’m not entirely sure what the catalyst for this was, but after much introspection I can safely assume it was the product of several incidents in my teenage years, when I experienced unsolicited physical contact from the opposite .

Let me begin by saying that I am not mentioning this to play the victim or inspire sympathy; I am merely acknowledging that it happened. There are many women (and also men) out there who have experienced far more terrible things, things beyond my comprehension. It has also happened to more than a few people I know personally, so I am far from being a unique case here. Stuff like this is much more common than we think, but I’m not sure if many people really talk about it openly, and how it has affected their views of themselves, if at all.

I suppose I’ll get the ball rolling by explaining how my experiences impacted me personally. First of all, I did not become a man-hater as a result of them, nor did I go the other way and begin seeking the company of men because I thought that was all I was good for. It was not something that scarred me for life. My self-worth did not crash and burn.

What did arise, however, was confusion – and a lot of it – as well as something of an aversion to my own gender (as it related to me personally, not a general dislike for women). Rather than blame those who were actually culpable, I blamed myself for attracting the unwanted attention simply by being female. I also blamed myself for a long time afterwards for allowing it to continue at the time, and not having done anything about it.

I never entertained any thoughts of gender reassignment or anything drastic like that, but I went through a significant period where I identified as female only biologically, because I could no longer relate to my gender on a psychological level. As far as I was concerned, I was a gender-ambiguous individual. Upon realising this, I’m a little ashamed to admit that my initial reaction was to do all the clichéd things one might expect me to do; for a time, I kept my hair short, I stopped wearing dresses, and I boycotted the colour pink. I repressed my emotions and refused to cry in the presence of others as far as I could prevent it. Anything considered to be a typically feminine trait, I shunned outright.

Like many things, I suppose I can attribute my behaviour to misunderstanding; a misguided belief that bad things had happened to me because I was female, and that this automatically meant I was perceived as weak and easy to overpower by those who might want to take advantage of me – a notion I refused point-blank to accept. In reality, things happened to me for the same reason that bad things happen to many of us – sometimes people are just ty.

Despite this, I don’t believe in holding grudges; the ability to forgive is an invaluable gift, and I try to exercise it as much as I can. I don’t condone what was done, of course, but I harbour no ill feelings towards the offenders. I just hope that they’ve since learned to treat others with respect – for their own sake, as well as that of the people they encounter in their daily lives.

These days I am a little more balanced in how I perceive things than I was back then. I am not particularly girly, but it is a personal choice. I cry sometimes because it is cathartic, and also because it is okay to cry, for males and females alike. The ability to show emotion (at appropriate times, of course) should not be associated with weakness – just like femininity itself. If anything, it is simply a different kind of strength.

I’ll wear a dress when the occasion calls for it, but I’m mostly a jeans girl. I still dislike pink, but this is because I don’t enjoy it aesthetically, and not due to any inherent symbolism that I might disagree with – unless it is neon pink, because neon pink is rad. I appreciate gory movies and sappy romantic anime on equal levels, and my fangirling over certain Asian boy bands could put many Directioners to shame. Yes, I am in my mid-twenties. I have no regrets.

My hair is currently the longest it’s ever been, but my reason for this is that I just haven’t gotten around to cutting it. Far from being my crowning glory, it looks like something has been nesting in it half the time… but I regularly wear it in a side ponytail, just to appease the giggly schoolgirl within. I hold no contempt for women who embrace their femininity wholeheartedly by being ‘typically’ girly – more power to them, I say. I’m not one of them myself, and that’s perfectly fine.

I no longer attach unnecessary meanings to things, because they are what they are, and I am what I am: a girl. But I have found great comfort in the realisation that I don’t have to be any particular kind of girl. I am my kind of girl.