#this blog is called 'skywillsometimeswrite' after all

[skywillsometimeswrite]

NB Awareness 2020 Day 2

Coming to terms!

TLDR: After years of coming to terms with myself, I am incredibly proud to be who I am, and labeling myself as nonbinary has been a huge help in that.

So my “gay awakening” as I call it was in 7th grade (around 12 years old) when I met who would end up becoming my first girlfriend. I was very much terrified of the idea of being gay and everything, and that is its own story, but as I came to terms with my sexuality I also began to come to terms with my gender... kind of.

I was doing a lot of exploring of myself and research on places like tumblr and various areas of the internet. I thought I was pretty comfortable calling myself a cis female, but as time went on I felt less and less comfortable with that label.

I played around with the idea of being genderfluid. I didn’t understand being nonbinary and it didn’t feel right at the time. Even so, genderfluid didn’t feel all that right either.

I think it was when I met who would become one of my closest friends did I start to truly understand what gender meant for me. See my friend is trans but when I met him I didn’t know this. We were put in a group together for a field trip and I wanted to try and talk to him but I didn’t even know how to address him. He looked truly androgynous and at this point I didn’t know about they/them pronouns. So I just... didn’t really interact with him. Or not in a way that made it obvious that I didn’t know his name or his gender. It made me start to think.

Around this time I was still going by genderfluid, and I would refer to myself as “Sam” as a more gender neutral name because Sophia didn’t make me feel comfortable. It was very feminine and back then I thought I needed to present myself as non-gender conforming to be accepting or believed that I wasn’t cis. Even so, I was being called Sara online usually as that was my “online persona” that made me feel more confident and she was very much a cis individual. At some point along this trend I found the name Sky and I gripped onto it. Sky became my identity for a while. They were the androgynous vision I wanted so desperately.  

I often refer to Sara (she/her), Sky (they/them), and Sophia (me/I) as these three separate entities because to me they kind of are? It’s really hard for me to explain. Because they are all the same person, they’re me, but also not?

I usually say that Sara is one part of Sophia, who is really me, while Sky is everything I want to be. But even I’m not totally sure if that’s true or not anymore. I guess I haven’t paid too much attention to it lately.

Anyways, I gripped onto and became Sky online and inside as best as I could. I wanted to be them, this confident and passing androgynous person that wasn’t dragged down by this doubt of themself. This doubt about who they are, if they were really genderfluid, if they were faking, if they were actually just straight or just gay or if they were really this or that.

By the time I enter into high school Sky has absorbed these doubts and fears and worries and slowly but surely isn’t really the Sky I wanted to be anymore. Sky has formed their own narrative in my mind and has become this entity that has just absorbed and housed my seemingly endless anxiety about myself, my academics, my family, and anything that really “attacked” me and my mind.

So I went back to Sara for a while. Sara felt comfortable. Sara felt safe. Sara felt... normal, I guess. I was still so against being Sophia that I just latched onto a personality that could cover and hide all that I was. It didn’t last very long.

I have these other characters/personalities that I often turn to a lot as my “editors” as I call them. Just sections of my personality and me. Kind of like an “Inside Out” type situation I guess. Sara was the leader of that for a long time, was the control freak of the bunch and everything had to be exactly as she said. Sky came in and really janked that up, was forced into that leadership position even though they didn’t know what they were doing. 

I was basically trying to force myself to be this person that I wasn’t, despite the fact that I really, really wanted to be them. I had been doing this for years. I didn’t even realize it.

Sara and Sky were just escapes for myself. Escapes that Sophia could jump into and get comfortable in and not face the realities that lay ahead of me. I guess it kind of worked for a while, but things started happening that I couldn’t just throw Sara or Sky at.

I had to start deciding who I was going to be. Sara and Sky started looking to ME for guidance more than me to them. And I slowly started to realize something.

The incredible @raindovemodel put in words the feeling that I didn’t realize I needed to hear.

I am I.

I am Sophia. I am a culmination of all my creations and all my experiences and all of my convictions and every person I’ve ever come into contact with.

So what does this have to do with my gender?

I think the simple answer is that I don’t care about my gender. When I realized that I was me, and I was so happy being me, the intricacies of myself didn’t matter. They were more fascinating than anything. I was more interested in what I wanted to do and be as a person, I was more concerned about the happiness of the people around me that I didn’t care what I was seen as.

I defined myself, once and for all (maybe), as nonbinary because that felt the most correct to me. It felt more me than genderfluid did. Because I wasn’t switching or feeling different from day to day or month to month like some genderfluid individuals. I felt stagnant in my gender and my identity, but not in a bad way. I was just... me. 

In the end, the label became a reason to be proud of myself. Of how far I’d come. I was happy to be me. And the word nonbinary just reminds me that I am I. I am Sophia.

And I don’t want to be anyone else anymore.