Sep 20 | Dusk Child, Part 1 (Letters from the Coast)

This is the first entry in a series of four on gender identity and my journey toward claiming my pronouns. While I hope to examine this topic from a more religious lens in later posts, this one is not explicitly spiritual in nature.

 

DUSK CHILD

My journey through gender identity

 

PART I. LOST

The line on the paper is so terribly blank, like a chasm I could fall into.

In neat letters beneath it is a shocking permission I have never before been granted:

Pronouns.

It is the first time I have ever been given this option.

I am twenty-seven years old.

I reach for my pen, pick it up, put it down.

The world spins around me.

 

I remember being four years old and telling my Uncle Chris that I was a princess in a tower, as I peered down at him from the landing of his staircase. He sang songs to me from below.

I remember being five years old and telling my mother I wanted to be a “ballerina unicorn” for Halloween. I was given a frilly pink tutu and a beautiful handmade felt mask from a store on Quadra Island.

I remember being six years old and tingling with excitement as I was dusted with blue eyeshadow and had diaphanous blue scarves tied to my wrists to finally join the upper level dance class and dance the most graceful dance I had yet seen in my young life.

And then, I remember being done with all of that particular kind of decorative, coltlike femininity for a long time.

I asked for my long hair to be cut off. My mother was probably relieved, as it was thick and troublesome to brush without loud yowls and protests. I exchanged dresses and skirts for jeans and Tshirts. A highlight of the day was to be mistaken for a boy.

But no matter how hard I tried, I felt like an outsider. I wanted to play with the boys, but they would run away from me, or bully me. I wasn’t interested in sports or rough-and-tumble games or climbing trees or riding bikes. I looked up to the tomboys I read about in books, but I never felt like I was one, even though my mother called me one. I liked to look like a boy, but I wanted to be with the girls. They were kinder, less boisterous. They liked to read and loved things I still loved, like unicorns and fantasy and magic.

I didn’t feel like I was born into the wrong body. I didn’t feel like everyone around me was nuts in calling me a girl. But why did it any of the labeling matter?

 

Class is over, and the empty space is still empty.

I pick up my pen again, push the rounded bottom against my upper lip, put it down.

I get up and go to the library. I take the paper with me.