A. Russo – More than the sum of my parts.

I have been meaning to put these thoughts down for a while. I don’t know if they’ll help anyone, but when I blog about gender identity it’s mostly for one of two purposes. Firstly, that maybe someone who doesn’t ‘get’ it might read this and start to understand. Secondly, because when I was learning about myself I felt incredibly alone, terrified and isolated, until I read blogs written by people like me which actually saved my life.  I’ve had a lot of time to ponder my identity, and even though I’m late to the party (in my mid-30’s), I know that while I’m genderfluid or non-binary, I’m also transmasculine.

I remember lying on my couch in the dark before I truly understood this, in a house far away from my family and my home state. I remember my thoughts spiraling down into a pit of depression I’d never experienced before, one that scared me so much I knew I had to examine it, dissect it, and figure it out, or there wouldn’t be anything left of me. I just lay there, my mind spinning, wondering why I couldn’t feel okay. Wondering why nothing in my life felt right.

When I first started exploring my own identity I didn’t know what labels were open to me. I didn’t know I could be one or many things. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and gender identity was rarely discussed. I had no role model. I had no guide. I didn’t know what options were on the menu. I had this idea of where I thought I should be based on what my society and culture told me I and based on my very best role models – my parents. By their mid-20’s they had everything I thought I should want to have. Great jobs, a home, two kids.

Took me forever to learn that I’m NOT them. Hell, I’m still figuring that out.

This isn’t meant to slight my parents. They’re actually the coolest parents. I never explored my gender identity as a child because they never enforced uncomfortable gender roles on their kids. I climbed trees, wore dirty jeans, played in the mud, and hated dolls. And all that was fine with them. I never felt forced into a box because there was no box.

This was both good and bad, in hindsight. Good because I had total freedom to be myself. Bad, because I never actually had any cause to question my identity until I got older and realized the things I had thought I wanted, weren’t. The role I tried to fit myself into was all wrong. I tried so hard to not stand out in a crowd that in doing so, I never questioned myself, my identity, who I was. Let me reiterate – I did it to myself.

I learned that much later.

The cool thing is, you’re never too old to learn about yourself. I had to learn that too. You’re never too old to look into your heart and see what or who it beats for. I wish I’d understood these things earlier, because it would have made my younger life a little easier in some respects, but I know them now. I know who I am and where I need to go.

Some days I still feel like I did this too late and I spent a decade and a half being totally the wrong person. Some days I feel way too old to change. Some days it’s so hard to put forth the effort to dress a certain way, style my hair just right, and present to the world the person I want them to see. I look in the mirror and catch a glimpse of that guy and I want to smash my fist into it because why can’t that guy be me every day, without this much effort?

And then I stop and I breathe and I look again, and I’m happy because at least I saw that guy. At least he was there. At least I know what I need, and where I have to go. Who I have to be.

The road is long; the road is hard. The road is paved with both successes and failures, with danger and fear. But it’s also paved with surprises, kindness, and love where I didn’t expect any. I can walk it, maybe slower than some, maybe later than some, but I can travel on it because that road isn’t exclusive.

There’s lots more that can be written on this topic, and lots I hope to eventually write. What I wanted to say, though, is that we all experience different travels, different journeys in life. We learn things about ourselves and if we keep our minds open, we won’t stop learning. We should listen to ourselves and listen to each other.

I came out to my parents, officially, two weeks ago, after about 5 years of self-exploration. I am 36.

I still have parents. They still love me. There’s confusion, and there’s difficulty. There’s misunderstanding and there are a lot of questions. In the end, though, when I told my dad I could handle pretty much anything but losing his love, he just looked at me with a stern expression on his face, the one he gets when he’s about to lay down the law, and said five words:

“That’s never going to happen.”

I’m sure there will be plenty of speedbumps in the road. We’ve already learned that acceptance doesn’t mean ready understanding. Unconditional love doesn’t mean unconditional acceptance. But for the moment, I took a risk and it paid off.

I’ve learned since that coming out isn’t a one-and-done deal. Every friendship I’ve had has been tested. Some have flourished. Some have died. I’ve found new ones I didn’t ever expect.

I’m currently on vacation, and it’s given me a lot of opportunity to re-evaluate what I’ve done with my life so far. I’ve been reflecting on where I am now and where I want to be in five years. I’ve been thinking about what I want, what I need to do with my life, how to make a difference. Change is coming, and I’m not afraid.

Oh, the places I’m going to go.

~Arin.

Ok. It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. Why? Because I suck at writing blog posts. I think lots of things throughout the course of the day, very few of which make it to this point.  Some of it is that I don’t always know how to say what I want to say properly. Tough situation for someone who writes, right? Part of it, though, is because sometimes I forget I have a voice and I can use it.

So anyhow – I read a post last week that said something that struck a note with me. It wasn’t immediately good or bad, but it resonated and it made me think a lot. It was the generic, highly assumptive statement that ‘we all hate labels.’

Do we?

I used to. When I was confused and struggling to self-identify I think I spent about a week going through a very brief ‘OMG don’t you label me’ phase. Maybe it was, like, two weeks. I didn’t like the idea of someone else looking at me and immediately assuming they KNEW me just because they’d filed me safely in their little box under a certain label of their choosing.

Bad label.

Then, months later, after wallowing through a mire of self-doubt and fear and completely uncertain territory, I began to accept myself. I found a label. And the relief I felt over it made me cry, because for so long I had been feeling completely alone. I was worried that no one was made like me and I would be by myself forever, having to hide and never allowed to say the things about myself I wanted to say.

Good label.

That label gave me freedom. It gave me relief. It made me feel slightly less alone. It didn’t feel entirely right, though, which led to more self-doubt. More questions. More worry that I had it wrong, that I was maybe crazy, a whole slew of nightmares I hadn’t even opened up yet.

I read more. I researched more. I opened myself up to learning about more and more people. Yeah, I found some haters. I found some people that wouldn’t accept me because of the label I chose for myself, but I found some who did. And, eureka, I found some people who used more than one label. I wasn’t stuck with one? OMG I can have ALL THE LABELS.

It was a ‘light bulb’ moment for me, realizing that labels aren’t always good or always bad. Some people might hate applying labels, period. But don’t tell me ‘don’t we just all hate labels’ when those labels I chose for myself helped keep my ass alive. When I sat in the dark wondering if I should bother living because I was never going to fit in anywhere, those labels I chose for myself made me feel like I fit in with someone, somewhere. When someone shyly said to me, “Do you feel like this too?” Well, I was able to nod, and say yes, and maybe there were only two of us. Maybe in the whole world full of round people we were the only two triangle people – but I wasn’t the only triangle person and that was the whole point!

So gimme the labels. I’ll take ’em. I’m not handing them out because I don’t think that’s anyone’s business but their own. It’s not my job to label you, but it’s also not yours to label me. If you ask me who I am and I reply with a laundry list of labels that makes your head spin, you don’t have to do anything but nod and smile.

My labels might not even mean the same thing to me that they mean to you. And that’s okay too. Talk to me about them. Have a discussion about what they mean to us both. That’s cool; we can discuss our labels like rational adults and then settle our disagreements like rational adults – with water guns and nerf battle gear.

Just don’t tell me to hate labels when they gave me nothing but relief from all the fear I felt. I’m going to wear my labels with pride, because for a while there I was floating in no-label-land and it was a pretty scary place. When it comes down to it, knowing I had a label at all was what saved me.

~Arin, the Labeled.

I don’t really go on a lot of rants. Seriously, it’s not my thing. So I’m not going to. I will say, though, that sometimes people do and say things that are hurtful even if they don’t mean them to be. When that happens, it’s often the part of the injured party to ‘rise above it’ and ‘not let it hurt them.’

You know what? Bullshit. If someone hurts you, even inadvertently, it’s okay to feel that way. It’s even okay to (calmly) tell that person who said it that they hurt you and why. It’s even okay to expect an apology, although you may not get one.

So here, I’m going to go into some personal stuff. Not because I think I owe to anyone, but because if someone comes along and reads this and gains some insight from it, it might help someone else out in the future.

Someone I know, who I consider a friend, asked me the other day, “So have you talked to your therapist about your gender issue?”

At the time my response was vague and inarticulate, because while I might be coherent online, in person I tend to get very shy and self-conscious when attention is focused on me. I’m pretty anxious in social situations and don’t really do well formulating snap-answers. I’m always the one who has an epiphany five hours later – ‘Aha! THAT’S what I should have said.’

So hearing that question was actually a little hurtful, and a little annoying. But rather than be angry about it, I’m going to try to turn it into a learning opportunity.

For one – why must you automatically assume I see a therapist?

For another – I don’t actually have any issues with my gender. YOU seem to have issues with it. So, have you spoken to YOUR therapist about my gender issue? Because it seems like you might want to.

When I first realized I was different, I was maybe in my teens. I had no idea HOW I was different, though, because no one in our community or my family talked about things like gender and sexuality. I didn’t know anyone like me, and none of my friends in high school or college indicated they were anything but cisgender and either straight or gay. Had I know there were other options on the menu, I might have reached this epiphany earlier in life. I wish I had.

But as it happens, I got through all my schooling without having this super self-exploration. As a result I never really felt like I’d gone through whatever process it is young people go through to learn WHO they really are. My friends all seemed to have this idea of themselves as a whole person. I didn’t. Not for quite a while.

The revelation that I was, indeed, different didn’t come until I learned words like ‘transgender’ and ‘genderfluid.’ I started reading, and reading, and reading, while boxes were being checkmarked all over the map of my brain and lightbulbs were flipping on everywhere. And then – I cried. I cried my eyeballs out. With relief, because I had a name for what I felt inside and I wasn’t alone or crazy. With fear, because I didn’t know how to handle it and I wasn’t sure I’d ever find acceptance.

As I continue on this journey, I know I’m going to run into all kinds of hate (I have – but I expect more). I get all kinds of questions like the one from above, even from people who claim to want to be my friends.

So, folks, your take-away is this:

No person’s journey is the same as anyone else’s. My adventure in discovering and being comfortable in my skin will not be the same as the next person’s, even if we eventually fall under the same labels and feel comfortable there. We all get there by different roads. Some of us got there faster. Some of us got there slower. Some of us are still picking our way over potholes.

No matter the person, no matter the relationship, treat them with respect. Treat them the way you’d want to be treated yourself. Me, I’m still on my journey. I’m actually happy to talk about it – but when your conversation opener is the one above, you’re immediately coloring the exchange by placing the person you’re talking to in a position of assumed inferiority by implying there’s something wrong with them. Who would actually want to open up and discuss it in that situation? Not many.

If you have friends or family members and you want to support them, demonstrate that not by asking them invasive questions, but by making sure they are SAFE first and foremost and then educating yourself. Let them know you’d love to talk to them about it. Ask them if there’s a website you might be able to read to learn more about whatever it is they’re going through – a lot of sites I’ve seen out there have some very good tips on how to discuss these topics (I’ll try to come up with a list later, but work is calling).

Open a conversation politely and respectfully. If you don’t know how to do that, ask your therapist. Because that seems like a bigger issue, to me, than whether or not I’ve discussed my gender ‘issue.’

~Arin.