I can fully understand how you feel on this. While my friend group as a young girl was undoubtedly smaller, I just don’t feel right interacting with those friends from back then. Even if they outwardly accept me, I can’t help but feel that deep down they don’t. Especially from my own family. Though they do shit that shows that they don’t accept me. It might be subconscious or they might not understand that it’s hurtful, but that don’t stop them.

Like recently I came to figure out who I actually was without any influence from outside sources. I finally realized how I came to cowtow to expectations of a boy that’s not a boy when I was younger. When I emptied my head of all preconceptions and asked myself “What do I like?”, I realized that most of my answers did not line up with what I actively did when I was younger or even currently.

I know this is verbose, but what I’m getting at is that I know if I interacted with them that I wouldn’t act genuinely. Cause the person they knew is not who I actually am, but a persona that I simply didn’t know I was wearing for most of my life.