This post is the third in a series.
I did quite a bit of journaling through the time when I was coming to recognize my reality. I would like to share some of these entries with you as a window into what it means to come out. Please come back to read through the rest of the journey. If you haven’t read the first, you can click here to be redirected to that post, called Truth. From there, at the bottom of each post you can navigate to the next.
Feb. 9, 2020
1040hrs
So far, I have not shared my thoughts about coming out with Barry. On the one hand, I want to just blurt it out. On the other hand, this feels tender. When I first started thinking about this, I knew I needed to dialogue with someone about it. I ran through possibilities, but none of them seemed entirely safe until I thought of Jasper. Barry isn’t in the unsafe category – he’s in the “newbie to LGBT stuff, hasn’t come out himself” category. I need inside experience and thoughts. Thank you, Spirit, for sending me to Jasper! I feel like I can be honest about what I’m thinking and feeling, and it will be treated with care and respect. I don’t think Barry won’t treat this news with care. He has been unwell and yesterday led a funeral. I want him to be in a good frame of mind. Also, it expands the circle of knowing and feels like it’s a shorter step from there to more people than when it’s just me and Jasper. It also feels like telling him makes it real and concrete and right now I’m still questioning whether it is real. Am I just making something up to be complicated? Am I seeing something that isn’t there? It feels like a long reach. It feels like I’m making something up, trying to shove puzzle pieces together that don’t belong together, like I’m trying too hard to fit in. I feel like to “come out” I’d better be damn sure because there’s no taking it back or shifting position.
But I’m not trying to forge a path forward, per se. I am recognizing what has always been: describing how I feel. So, does non-binary woman describe how I have felt and continue to feel? I think so. My body doesn’t always represent me. I think of all the times I’ve wanted to accomplish something and then surprise people with a reveal that “Ta Da! I’m a woman!” (think badass motorcycle rider taking off helmet and flipping long hair and everyone is supposed to think, “a woman did that?”). Is that part of it? I think of never really believing that, as a woman, I am held back from anything if I want to do it: I don’t feel like restrictions apply to me because of my body/gender (maybe for other reasons, like lack of skill or confidence 😊). Is that part of it? I have been annoyed when people make assumptions about me based on my physical body. Is that part of it? So many stories of what it means to be a woman, mother, girlfriend, etc. seem so foreign to me – ways of thinking, relating, feeling that are not my experience.
I have thought for a while now that there is a spectrum of “womanness” and I am not at the extreme end. I know that. I guess I’m just opening to the possibility that places on that spectrum have identifying labels and that perhaps one of those labels describes me.
I am not uncomfortable with my female body. I am uncomfortable with and do not experience many of the expectations that come with that body. I have many internal experiences that seem to align with masculine identities.
From Reddit: What people think are “trends in queerness” are actually old feelings given new names.
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
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