Recently, I’ve been grappling with my gender identity on a frequent basis. It’s been distressing and confusing to say the least. I’ve been desperate for words to describe my experience because not only do I seek the world’s understanding, but I seek understanding within myself.
Today I spoke to the part of myself that is nonbinary. I created space for them to share their feelings back. I allowed them to be heard. I encouraged them to cry and scream and rock back and forth until they felt they had expressed all they had bottled up inside of them. I apologized to them for not respecting them enough and assured them that I love them and would work hard to do better without placing the burden of progress on them.
I’m sure most of you think I must be clinically insane to be talking about the nonbinary version of myself as a separate person. Not long ago, I would have felt similarly, but I’m learning. We are all comprised of many different versions of ourselves. Different ages, different identities, different emotional predispositions. This version of myself happens to be late teens/early twenties and I saw them slumped on the floor defeated. They felt ignored, alone, in the dark. They felt nobody would ever see them. So I made a point to ensure they knew I saw them.
Only this morning, I spoke at length with my ketamine therapist about my session from yesterday where I felt connected to my mother and grandmother’s trauma and my female ancestry overall. I felt connected to womanhood, the birthing experience, and my female body. I felt grief over not having the experience of a primal free woman. It evolved into inner turmoil. I was churning over if I could actually be nonbinary when I felt this generations old spiritual connection to womanhood.
Then this afternoon, I spent time with a friend I hadn’t seen since before changing my pronouns to exclusively they/them and she misgendered me multiple times over. I was trying to locate the source of my distress as I drove home and reached my couch in tears. I realized I was more upset by my lack of standing up for this nonbinary part of myself than I was upset with her for messing up a few words after having known me a different way for five years prior. I realized that it’s my job to protect that part of myself.
Through all of this conversing with myself and eventually only listening to my thoughts, it hit me that I don’t have to choose. I don’t have to identify with womanhood or the nonbinary experience. I can identify with womanhood and the nonbinary experience. Because while I, Grace as a conglomerate whole, am not a woman, I share the woman’s experience. I know what it is to have society treat me as a woman is treated. I experience painful periods and the predatory nature of many men. I have an understanding of my mother and her mother that I don’t have with my father or even his mother. There’s something special about the lineage of women that I’ve followed. And something undeniable about the burdens they’ve passed down to me because of our shared biology. Those parts of me are all woman.
In addition to that, I’m nonbinary. I’m living in a modern world where we created the social construct that is gender to enable people to find their notch of safety and comfortable expression. This is how we passively describe our place in humanity, or feelings of being displaced. This is how we engage with our bodies in regards to the expectations placed on them. I can’t deny that I feel better when I am outwardly embodying my nonbinary identity. I find myself more at ease, like I can relax and explain myself less. There are less caveats and rifts between how I see myself and how I describe myself when I, as well as others, use gender neutral language.
So I’m not going to choose. I’m not going to apologize for the inherent connections I have with womanhood that will never leave me. And I’m not going to apologize for the inherent queerness that weaves itself through my bones. One does not negate the other. They coexist within me. And when they are only within me, they don’t fight one another. They find themselves at odds when the rest of the world becomes involved. When the external gives their opinion and places more expectations upon them to choose one victorious. What everyone else often forgets is that nobody needs to prevail victorious when they share the crown in peace. I believe I am on the road to mending the relationship between these parts of myself that have become so damaged over the years. It won’t happen overnight, I’m sure, but as long as they are communicating with one another and no longer holding swords to the other’s chin, there is hope for my inner calm and strength to overcome the outer chaos.
All of this ironically reminds me of the expectations placed on women. Always pitted against each other when instead they could be holding one another up and cheering each other on. I won’t succumb to those petty expectations. That’s why I have these different parts of myself in the first place. We are working together now. And we are resting for the first time in twenty two years because we’ve realized we don’t require a constant fight just to exist. We don’t need to conquer to have our existence validated. We are simply here. Nobody can tell my nonbinary self or my woman self that they don’t deserve to be here or that they aren’t good enough. They are more than enough. They are necessary. And they can share the light.