If I’m going to be real in this blog, I might as well open
up and start from the beginning in regards to the hardest struggle I’ve ever
had to face; my sexuality. Those who go on my Ask.fm will be familiar with my
long rants about how okay it is to be gay. I’m hoping that my writing will be
able to help people here on the internet, and that this is the beginning of
what I’d like to be my career as an activist.
The world is a strange place for people like me, who just
don’t sit well with the norm. Any super hero movie, high school drama or
bildungsroman novel will tell you how hard it is to be different, so I won’t go
into all that. I’ll just tell my story.
When I was very young (aged 2 to 5, I reckon) I wanted to
wear skirts and be a princess, or a fairy, or a mermaid. This would later go in
tandem with me wanting to be a knight, or a wizard, or a pirate. The androgyny
of my childhood shouldn’t have been an issue. After all, young boys in
pre-revolutionary France would wear dresses at that age. I always seemed to
have more in common with girls, but I always knew it wasn’t okay. It
contradicted people’s perception of gender rolls.
Once, I was at the birthday party of my friend, a girl, and
I was the only boy invited. The girl’s brothers were playing sport outside, and
the girls asked me why I didn’t go play with the boys. Like I was supposed to. It
crushed me when they said that, and to this day I haven’t forgotten the shame
and embarrassment I felt for just trying to be me. Caught between genders, with
no friends who quite understood, it really was hard. I wanted long hair, I
wanted to play with dolls and wear nail polish. My parents never have cared,
but the world did, and soon I did too. Upon meeting my new primary school
friends, I forbade my parents or my brothers from talking about the “girly”
things I did, or showing people photos of me in tutus.
It shouldn’t have been that way. I now know that transsexual
tendencies in young children is perfectly natural and not uncommon, and so now
I’m not ashamed to think about that phase of my life. But back then, I felt
like I had no choice but to push that side of me away.
Primary school warped me into a different person, as the
girls gradually became more distant and expectations for masculinity rapidly
heightened. Every now and then, when I was alone, I would get out my dolls and
make up stories with them, or draw pictures of dresses and mermaids, secretly
expressing my imprisoned feminine side. One time, when a friend found my dolls,
I tried and failed to pretend I had a sister so that he wouldn’t judge me.
The mountain of stuffed toys I took to bed each night, each
with their own soapy story, life skills and quirky personality, were my best
friends, because we understood each other. I loved my dog, Sam (who sadly
passed away last year), as much as anyone in the world because he loved me no
matter what I looked like or what I did – it didn’t effect him, so why did it
matter? Why couldn’t humans be like that?
Being a kid and working out how the world works is hard
enough when you have a clearly defined gender. While I always assumed I would
grow up to love girls and marry one and have children with one, I always felt
like a big part of me was a girl. But our culture deems that I have a penis and
therefore am a boy and must therefore do things that other boys traditionally
do, and so the girl part of me just … sort of … faded. I now fully identify as
male and I’m no longer able to play with dolls … but it came at a cost. Growing
up meant I had to sacrifice that stuff to survive, or so I’ve always felt.
The heroes in this story are my parents, who loved me and
protected me through all of this and didn’t give a damn whether I played with
soccer balls or barbies. If I came home from school crying because someone in
the playground was giving me a hard time, they were always there to tell me,
“it gets better”. Of course, they continue to say “it gets better” to this day,
but I live without a doubt that they are right.
My past and my internal struggle is no longer something I’m
ashamed of. It’s now something I’m proud of. I like that I’m different. I like
that I’m not dull. I like that I’m not hiding all my true feelings away anymore.
Because I realise what it all meant now, and I realise that there wasn’t
something wrong with me. There was something wrong with society, for putting
people in boxes and passive-aggressively forcing them to conform.
Thanks anyone reading this for sticking around! I’ll
continue this story with some discussion about my time in the closet and the
process leading up to my eventual coming out. If anyone has read this and
identifies with any of it, please rest assured that you’re not alone, that everyone
is different and that that’s awesome, even if it’s a lot harder for some
people.
Thanks for reading. Have a great day. J
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