i actually need to talk about mitsuki koga because this has been sitting in my head for days and it’s getting embarrassing. like why am i thinking about a fictional girl this much. relax. but also no because she makes sense to me in a way that’s kind of annoying. it’s not even that she’s androgynous because that word gets thrown around so easily. like people see short hair and loose clothes and suddenly it becomes a whole statement. but with her it does not feel like a statement. it does not feel like she woke up and decided to be in between. she just is. she just exists. and i keep trying to figure out why that hits me so hard. i do not sit around thinking i need to transition or become something else. i do not feel urgency like that. but i do feel uncomfortable when people shrink me into one lane too fast. when girl starts meaning something specific. when femininity becomes a script i did not agree to. and it is not hatred. i do not hate being a girl. i do not wake up wishing i was not. i just hate the tightness of it sometimes. the way it feels like a small box people keep trying to close around me. i do not hate being a girl. i hate being contained. it is weird because i have always felt slightly misplaced in everything. not dramatically. just slightly. culturally. romantically. even physically sometimes. like i am here but not fully planted. like i am hovering half an inch above whatever category i am supposed to stand in. sometimes i wonder if i have just normalized small discomfort and decided it is personality. maybe i have gotten used to being slightly off center and just call it being different. maybe i am projecting. maybe she is just a character and i am layering my own internal confusion onto her because it is easier than sitting with my own thoughts. but even if that is true it still means something. she just makes sense to me. if the world stopped policing gender completely and nobody cared how i was read would i still feel in between something. or would i just feel like me.