Happy Monday to my That’s Gay family! :)
I know I said That’s Gay isn’t becoming a full-time podcast (and it still isn’t), but I thought I’d upload an audio version of me reading the entry below in addition to posting it. We love some multimedia madness.
Anyways, this is a journal entry titled THEY.
I wrote it over the weekend, on Saturday morning, heart warmed by a fluffy pupper, stomach full of spinach and eggs. I didn’t think it would become this week’s newsletter – I was just sitting down to journal (a long overdue task) – but here we are.
Although I didn’t write it with this intent, THEY stands as a testimony for what my genderqueerness means to me; or, maybe better put, how it feels within me.
With all the debate and confusion surrounding pronouns and gender, I think we often lose sight of the emotional weight that gender identity carries in favor of watching the circus play out. THEY is a return to that weight; about how it feels to be weighed down by it; about how it feels whenever that weight is lifted.
I left it mostly unedited – minus some embarrassing spelling mistakes and sections where I could only guess what my hand was trying to communicate (#messyhandwritingclub). I did that because it’s just a journal entry; just me telling myself (and now you, too) how I feel.
So, you’ve got options here: read it, listen to me read it, or read it while listening to me read it – wow, sorry, don’t mean to overwhelm you here …
Whichever or whatever you choose, here’s what I wrote on Saturday, sitting out on the patio with the sun on my face:
04/03/2021 - Saturday
Danced and sang this morning – all alone in the middle of the woods. ‘Twas glorious. I was hesitant to come out to Connecticut but damn, I think I really needed this.
Ok, here’s what I want to write about today: I need to learn to be as myself as I am alone with other people; to stop apologizing for being.
Because while I do love being alone, I don’t want to be alone, ya know?
Second, who do I want to be? What kind of person? Let’s envision it, shall we? I want to be someone with more surety – someone with more conviction and less apologies or silent rumination behind their decisions; less guilt for not being what others want or expect them to be; less disappointment in disappointing others because of their emotions – as if apologizing for being human.
I want to feel the sun on my face and smile ridiculously in it and not obsess over how that makes me look. Wonder, sure – I’m only human – but not obsess like I have been.
Who is future me? She’s kind of a badass – but not the kind you’d expect. She’s caring and clumsy and funny looking at times, but she lives first, thinks second. She does not dwell. Maybe that’s what makes her a badass.
I don’t want to set the bar too high for myself – impossibly high. I like myself, I do, I just wish I liked myself a little more, a little more often. And not the “myself” other like, but the “myself myself” – the same one that comes out when I live first; the same one that’s kind of a badass. I want her to exist outside of myself; in front of others, so that she can feel the sun on her face and smile oh so ridiculously in it.
I want him to stop apologizing for her; for who she is. I want him to stop doubting that she can exist anywhere but in the darkness.
Together, they are who I want to be.
Lil’ disclaimer: Gender is a spectrum and there are countless ways to experience it. This is just how I felt about my gender on this particular Saturday morning – my words and my words alone.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 31. See you in Volume 32, folks!
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[Vol. 31] THEY