Evolving. Becoming. Unbecoming. Still Growing & Going.
If you asked 6 year old me if I would be queer, or know what being queer is, I would not be able to answer those questions. If you were to ask teenage me, what my gender was, I would say “man?” with a confused face like “what kind of weird question?” But by sixteen years old, I was learning new things and new people. Meeting queer people who would call themselves she/her but identify as gay men. And some of them were exactly that while some would later realize that their gender was not the one assigned to them by doctors and their parents and some would realize that they fall nowhere in the binary. I am one that falls outside of that binary. I vaguely (sometimes vividly) remember portions of my childhood, and I’m talking before as young as younger than 10 years old, when we would play “dolly house”, I was mostly always a girl, a mother, a woman. With curtains, sheets and towels draped around my body, towels as wigs wrapped around my head, flowing down to my shoulders or even my mother’s pussycat wigs secured onto my scalp for however many hours of play. I remember being asked “You wish you did born one girl?”, I remember answering “Yes”. I remember them laughing about it, ridiculing me for it until it was forgotten. Just as Jamaican families love sweeping your and their queerness under the rug until it gathers dust. But I did not have the words needed then to describe anything about me, not even gay. Maybe “battyman” which I would definitely denounce because it was laced with the most insipid taste. It felt like a dragging down.
I cannot say to this day that I completely understand what gender is and what it all means. But I can tell you how I feel and what I don’t feel like. I can tell you what my journey looks like. Today, I am genderqueer. This is the word (having had access to a wider queer language) that I feel good being referred to as. This is what feels like me. To me, my genderqueerness highlights the ways in which I have times that I feel like both traditionally binary genders, moments when I feel like either, and moments when I fall somewhere on that spectrum. I have moments when being called a man or any terms normally associated with that gender makes me feel terrible. I have moments when I am completely okay with those terms being thrown at me. Most times, it feels horrible when it’s coming from non-friends, because that just reinforces that I’m seen as just that, just a cis-man. And I cannot complain. I must not complain for my own safety.
See I’m not not a man, I’m also not a man. I know that’s confusing, yes it’s confusing to me too. But I am learning me, everyday.
Pronouns
Pronouns are something I’ve been goingback and forth with for the past couple of months. From he/him, to he/they, to they/he to battling with just using they/them. The reality is, even if I decide to just use they/them pronouns, it will never happen at home, it will never happen at work, and I think to myself “What’s the fucking point then?” . And I’ll definitely be excusing anybody who uses he/him pronouns anyways in order to keep peace and to savor my own sanity. The thing is I could learn something new tomorrow and I could just brave up and say fuck it and embrace those they/them pronouns, or I could completely use any or no pronouns at all. I am constantly evolving and learning.
COMMUNITY
My favorite thing right now is community. Whether it’s my close friends or members of the trans and non-binary community I’ve met online. Specifically black trans and non-binary folks. I love how they all feel like a warm hug no matter how near or far they are from me. I love seeing them live in their truth. It gives me hope that some day I can be my full and complete queer self. Honestly, it’s in seeing people discover themselves or supply me with the proper resources I needed to understand and discover more about myself, that has helped me to come this far. Some might even say identity is a whole bunch of nothing and it’s not important, because we are just bodies with souls. I feel like that sometimes. Sometimes thinking like that helps me to not get in my head about my own gender identity and prevents invalidating myself. But, trust me, for some, that some includes me, identifying really helps to bring some sort of euphoria to life and it helps find community, which is such a fucking important thing to me. Who needs just one home when you can have a whole community?
I just hope the community I have found continues to extend that gentleness to me while I continue evolving, becoming, unbecoming, growing and going. For this is not the end of my journey.
