Matter: Why does it matter?
What makes it important? Why do we need to know about protons and electrons? Why do we need to care about the positive and negative charges of atoms? We’ll never see an ion. We can only imagine what they look like. What they act like. How negatively charged ions act around positively charged ones. Maybe as people, we can relate. Maybe as humans, we can humanize it. Maybe I'm an anion in a room of cations.
L
ike atoms, people react to those around them. I’m negatively charged, so when a positively charged someone comes near me, they get an electron. But you see, they don’t want the electron, and it makes them negative towards me. That’s a big difference. Atoms are nothing like people. When you give them something, they are grateful. They might want to join you. If Dioxide meets Hydrogen they connect, get into a permanent relationship, till death do them part and all that. If you give a person something, they might like it. They might want more, take more than you have. Or they may hate it, break it, break you. That’s... not all that great.

Now, they can’t physically break me. I look like a girl. I may not dress like one, but to them, I look like a girl. I’m not really a girl. I have the bits and bobs of one but I’m not. I’m a dude, a guy, a male. I don’t bother telling them that though. They don't need to know. They might hate me less, or more, but it still would go unwell. They may respect me and my rights (Yay!), but if I'm a guy just like every other one, what if they act like I am one, like they can hit me and it’d be ok. But if I’m male, I shouldn’t be scared of that. I should man up as they say. Maybe I'm just a coward. And transphobes and homophobes would hate me. There are lots of them. They aren’t obvious, but the looks they give my friends and me, like a silent “Look at the queer freaks and their little friend. Why would she even associate herself with them? What's wrong with them?” And don’t get me started on the scared ones. They look at them with this look of fear, as if they think we can pass it on like the flu. Stupid transphobes with their stupid “Being LGBTQ+ is a mental illness” mentality.

If I don’t tell them, they’d think I’m just bad at being female, they would see me as the fat, stupid, awkward, and overall undesirable girl. I don’t want that... that would suck. Not only am I not a girl, but I'm already self-conscious about these things. I wear hoodies do hide my body, I subconsciously hide my face when someone walks by. I cringe whenever I talk, terrified that I sound like an idiot. And what if I tell them and they don’t care, they just see me as the fat stupid awkward and overall undesirable guy.

And it doesn't help when I doubt everything myself.
It doesn't help when I ask myself constantly: "What am I?"