10/7/14

Around this time last year, I was sitting outside with Katie and Abby, and asked them permission to have a 'vulnerable moment'. As this blog would suggest, I'm no stranger to being open with my emotions, and while I keep to myself around most people, my roommates can attest more than most that I enjoy speaking about what's on my mind whether they wish to hear it or not. However, typically when such venting occurs, I attempt to air a sense of humor and self-deprecation to the topic, both as a way to avoid ever being taken too seriously, but also to alleviate the tension that comes hand-in-hand with a conversation one feels they can't laugh about. So, on occasion, I find it necessary to emphasize that, while I continue to not take my words or the act of venting as something that can't come with a sense of humor, the topic I am about to drag them into is one that I do find more serious - whether or not the topic actually is is up for them to decide, not me. 

For the years that led to that point, I had been passionately, and actively attempting to come to terms with who I was. Though I didn't have the typically homophobic coming-of-age queer story that one can't help but imagine when someone such as myself begins to open up about how hard it is to feel entirely normal, no matter how many times I reminded myself that the labels floating around the top of my head didn't matter to me or those I cared about, I simply couldn't shake the feelings of otherness that crept and crawled under my skin upon any social gathering. In the most formative years, I tried to keep those thoughts further and further away from how I acted; yes I'm insecure about people seeing me with painted nails, but I liked them, so I continued to do it anyway. By the time I reached college, it had grown to a point where it felt like an exhale of relief was imminent. I had put in the work and found myself in a position in which the only people around me were people I trusted, and people who knew exactly who I was from the day they met me. Unlike the previous years, in which I was still dipping my toes into the comfort crowd, and the lingering thoughts that my friends would at one point draw the line at almond-shaped acrylics and have to inform me they no longer wanted to befriend that kind of gay person, these new companions in my adult life had met me with a miscolored concealer under my eye and fresh clear coat on my nails, so they would have no reason to feel as though my femininity was a shock in any way. However, like most "fresh starts" in life, the immortality phase can only last so long, and before I knew it I was once again in positions of discomfort. My friends introduced me to their friends friends, and their friends made comments, and those comments got laughs or little to no disapproval. Despite the years of effort, I found myself putting in to give myself the love and assurance I would give anyone else in my position, the sting of being introduced as the "gay one" never seemed to go away. 

Within those years of self-indulgent confidence, were some of the most profoundly happy moments of self-love. Without the opinions of others pulling at you, one can achieve a sense of identity in the truest form. And during that time, I found that those effeminate icons, long nails, short shirts, and more makeup, were not feeding me in a way that played into my sexuality. I wasn't attempting to come off as feminine, much less twink-ish, but simply allowing myself the freedom to adorn myself with symbols of individuality that felt truly my own, completely devoid of labeled connotation. But as comments grew more frequent, and my queerness grew into a category of friendship, rather than community, I began to second guess the years of confidence I had grown into. My nails grew shorter, my clothes baggier, though keeping that shred of dignity and never ditching who I was in my core, I had grown into a version of myself that lacked enjoyment in the things I had spent all that time convincing myself to love freely. This was the conversation I embarked Abby and Katie into;

 I know who I am for the most part. I care about most things, I love my friends more than anything, I like to read for months at a time and then stop very suddenly, I've liked Spiderman for as long as I can remember, I find 99.99% of male-led conversations deeply annoying, I actively try to separate my feelings from how I treat people, I don't like being out late, Radiohead is very special to me, I love making art but only when it's for my own desire to make it, and drinking coffee has been a daily morning activity since I was 16 years old. I know the things I like, and I know the things that I don't, but when it comes to who I am when being seen or talked about, or perceived at all, I couldn't be more clueless. For years I built up the courage to get acrylics, to wear crop tops, to talk openly about femininity, and to not hate the defining words about myself, and I got to a point where all of that happened at once. I did it proudly and confidently, not only unashamed but embarrassed for those who looked down on it. And then all of a sudden, I stopped. My nails stayed short and unpainted, my eye bags became part of my face again, and I only showed skin on the one day a week I had classes in the Fashion building, and even then it usually stuck to - barely - my lower stomach or my entire arms. But what got under my skin more than anything, to the point where I felt I needed to sit those closest to me down and discuss the thoughts I had been having, was that it didn't bother me. I was under the assumption that, once I got to a point in my development in which I was okay doing those things, that's who I would be for the foreseeable future. The reality was all that work led to a short-lived phase. Why had it been such a big deal if it wasn't even who I was going to be once I became myself? But what led to that conversation, and the writing I'm doing now, is how can I ever know who 'myself' is, if it changes so drastically, and even more frequently? 

Over the last year, I bounced right back again. My nails grew longer, this time naturally, my shirts grew smaller, and my shorts higher up my thighs. I'd shave my legs once a week, with a good amount of lotion and glycolic acid to keep the razor bumps to a minimum. But after a certain point, the questions continued to eat away at me. Who am I really? Regardless of whether or not it matters, it came largely from a place of wanted consistency. I like people to know what they signed up for, and for myself to have a steady and strict schedule to adhere to, if nothing else but because whenever that schedule changes, this blog happens and I begin to question every aspect of my identity. But as the school year has begun, almost a full two months ago, this schedule has once again shifted. With much less time on my hands, and considerably less will to keep myself as prim and proper as I typically like to when all I have to do is look at myself throughout the day, I'm trying to piece together the pieces and figure out a pattern of why I do what and when. Much like previous writing in which I detailed the patterns of my style in correlation to the time of year, my mind and body seem to be working on a similar clock. It struck me that I had hit the point on the head a while ago, and simply forgot how much it resonated with me throughout all things; it has nothing to do with my identity. I enjoy things like growing my nails out for the same reason I enjoy cutting them short. I like the duality. I like being able to express that I am feminine and that I'm a man, neither of which has anything to do with my nail length or personality beyond being someone who likes that sort of thing. Because what these thoughts really are isn't me trying to figure out who I am, or what I like, or what I want to be perceived as, or the fear of it all, it's me falling victim to the labels and categories that I fought so hard for so long to break out of, only consequently falling more deeply into it. 

In my adult life, I've garnered a good amount of differing experiences to the point that I sort them all in my head - things to avoid, and things to welcome. I don't like finance bros, I do like people who listen to Radiohead, I don't like bars in Tempe, and I do like getting a beer with Katie when all of our homework is finished. For the most part, these labels have acted as ways to learn from my mistakes, to recognize myself, and avoid putting myself in positions that I will later have to write about. But the more I experienced, and the more I sorted, and called off parts of life as things I had no interest in; I was limiting myself, and my future experiences, boxing myself up into a kind of person and labeling it as freedom. I was putting labels around me that didn't break me from the categories I had placed over my head but categorized myself as someone above them all. There isn't a pattern, or a consistency to fall into in which the hard work will be done and I will never have to consider myself someone still working out the kinks and hard parts of my identity, its simply another aspect of life that I and everyone else unfortunately has to deal with as they come and pass. And I write all of those today, not the awaken some mindset that I will inevitably double back on in a few months time, or inspire others to overthink every intersection of themselves as I do, but rather to not have to put Abby and Katie through another conversation neither of them has any interest in hearing about for the 15th time in the three years we've been living together - poor girls.