No, I don’t know what my gender is. Stop asking me.
Tags: Queer, Transgender, Gay

You’re eleven years old and you’ve gotten your period for the first time.

Something like glee spread through you from the toes up, like a bowl overflowing with water. You’re a real girl now. This is going to make you feel whole, like a puzzle piece slotted neatly into place.

It doesn’t. Actually, it’s just kind of gross and bad and the more you think about it the more awful you feel. You don’t want kids, not ever, not to breastfeed or to give birth, so all of this feels vaguely unnecessary. You wash your hands in the bathroom sink and walk back to class.

You’re twelve and you’re using your school iPad to look at pictures of Marilyn Monroe, wide hips and scalp full of washed-out curls, all black, all gray. You’re not surprised that she’s beautiful, or that she makes you feel warm all over, but you are surprised that her face isn’t the end of it. You still feel like you have a secret, and Marilyn’s signature pout offers absolutely no insight.

You’re thirteen and your backpack is pink, your hair is spotted with bleachy, fading-purple streaks, and you love being a girl. You think. It makes sense that you are — you like the things girls like. You laugh the way girls laugh. You look the way girls do. Boys are mean and stupid and don’t understand you. They laugh at you in the hallways and make jokes about attack helicopters, which you don’t really understand, but you do know are super disrespectful. You look at them during class — the way their hair curls over their ears, the frantic tapping of their shoes against the tile — and decide you must just like them. A simple solution to a complicated problem.

You go online. Of course you do, your brain is full of motor oil and you want everyone to know your opinions. A nice girl invites you to a discord server — you ask your parents for months to let you download it, and eventually wear them down to the enamel. Everyone thinks you are a boy. You inform them sorrowfully (sorrowfully?) that no, you are not. It’s something to take pride in, after all. Girls can also Have Opinions and Write Stories and Participate In Discourse. You consider it necessary to clear up the misunderstanding. Be yourself! The walls whisper incessantly. Be proud of your blood. Be proud of your bones. Be proud of the curve of your spine.

Okay, you say, feeling vaguely as if you have just been strong-armed into something. You’ll try.

You learn about trans people through your friend, who is nonbinary and uses exclusively they/them pronouns. It’s not that hard to do it for them, even if you don’t totally get it, so you do your research. You try to get it.

You decide you aren’t trans.

Trans people hate their body, and you’ve never particularly hated yours. It doesn’t particularly feel like it holds you, necessarily, but that’s how everyone feels. You’re electricity flickering through meat, not particularly ground, always tired, always incoherent. That’s the quintessential human experience, you tell yourself. And it’s not like boys are so great. They’re annoying and loud and don’t seem to understand kindness or goodness or all the qualities you’re trying really hard to possess.

Maybe you’ve been looking at the wrong boys, someone suggests. You don’t take it to heart.

You think you’re bisexual. The label slips over your shoulders neatly, like a worn fur coat. You know you like girls — your heart thrums like a hummingbird in their presence, frantic and fast, drawn to smooth skin and pink mouths. Your attraction to men has always been a bit more complicated. You’ve flirted with boys before, and each and every time it’s felt uncomfortably like you were trying to consume them. Take a bit of something they have and stuff them inside. It makes you feel uneasy, slippery, and so you take a step back.

Everyone reminds you that you’re a girl. You don’t exactly dislike it, but it feels like there’s something missing — like you’re something else, too. But you’ve shaved your dolphin-legs and your hair is long and frames big eyes so you’re probably, probably, probably a girl. And if you’re a girl, that means you aren’t a boy.

You dream about drowning. You don’t really know what it means. You don’t know what a lot of things mean, nowadays. You go back to sleep and play white noise until your brain fades out.

You think a lot about being dead. You don’t feel very alive, that’s for certain. Just skin and neurons and occasionally tripping over a crack in the concrete. It’s not bad, but it’s not you. You don’t know what you are.

You like labels. They’re neat and comforting, tiny, warm boxes. You don’t have any for yourself other than your declaration that you’re attracted to more than one gender, even if one of those attractions seems strangely predatory. Everything else you could possibly cling to drains out of your hands like falling sand.

Looking at yourself through a dreamlike lens, you see two images superimposed on top of each other, a blurry reflection of a reflection of a reflection. You like it. You look less human that way.

Your medication makes you forget to eat. You forget to sleep. You forget to do anything.

You don’t mean to be cruel, but it’s actually very easy. Life isn’t a story. Reading in cars makes you sick. You look for things you can eat when your wires burn.

You’re a girl because you smell like cotton and like to shave your arms. You come up with reasons for why you’re a boy in the mirror after stepping carefully out of the shower, window dotting with perspiration. You don’t consider that looking for reasons is a pretty good reason.

Everyone in this Farmer’s Market is dissecting you with their gaze. You try to remember what the space behind your eyelids looks like — you try to remember anything.

You are a body. You are a boy. You are a girl. First and foremost, you are very scared of change.

You do not get on the plane.