Being somewhere in between
Finding more footing with the home within myself
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Earlier last week, I had been feeling frustrated about Instagram and was wanting to take a month off of it. I took the weekend away from the app and went back yesterday, sitting back and forth with my feelings about it. I tend to have this mentality of “all or nothing” with many things in my life when I really see moments like this asking me to have more balance and better boundaries. I don’t want to live in this place of “all or nothing” I want to be somewhere in between. I exist in a gray area and forever will exist in that space.
On Friday, I went to a Trans Youth Rally with my partner that started in front of the Capitol building in Downtown Atlanta. I never had the words for being Non-Binary until around 2018. I never felt comfortable when people would use “he/him” pronouns for me, and I still don’t. Until 2018 though, I didn’t really grasp that I had dysphoria and discomfort about my assigned gender at birth. I remember shooting some photos in 2017 with my friend Mattiel for a show I was doing and having all of these looks prepared for it. At the time, I had a beard and kept shaving my face slowly to fit the various personas I wanted to embody in the photos. I remember having Mattiel help me with makeup and wardrobe for the last look and feeling so at peace with how I looked and presented myself. I didn’t know then, but now I realize I was having my first real spurt of gender euphoria.
That feeling took me back to times when I was playing dress up with more feminine clothes with the neighborhood kids, who were mainly girls. I remember, though, always feeling as a child that I wasn’t a girl, nor was I a boy. It was always this knowing that I had no proper words to express it. When I came out as Queer, I started immersing myself in spaces & communities that took time to communicate each other’s pronouns. I publicly came out as Non-Binary using strictly “They/Them” pronouns last year on “Trans Day of Visibility,” and it had been exactly a year since the day that I came out when I attended the Trans youth rally. During the rally, I was surrounded by so many folks in my community calling for liberation. We were all in the crowd watching out for each other. There were Trans folks of all ages and a handful of people with disabilities as well. It was well attended and deeply intentional, down to the use of having ASL interpreters next to the people who were speaking and asking for Disabled folks to lead the march to make sure the pace was accessible for everyone.
Actively using people’s pronouns that are shared with you is an act of deep intention and mindfulness, much like respecting and following through with other people’s access needs. These things go hand in hand. I think it was telling for me to attend a Trans rally on Friday and then attend a Deaf festival on Saturday; how interlinked these worlds are to me, how these worlds ask for intention to be placed in collective action and respect. Nets of safety aren’t built when pronouns or access needs aren’t being fully respected or honored.
Saturday was the first time I had ever really been immersed in Deaf culture, I’m still in the beginning stages of learning ASL, and our teacher asked us to go to the festival to immerse ourselves in it. Part of me felt sad that I hadn’t tried to immerse myself in this sooner. I’ve been trying to slowly take more space away from relying on my hearing aid to communicate and figuring out what that might look like moving forward. In the room, I saw so many Deaf folks relying on their hearing aid and sign language to communicate. Growing up, I felt this strict division of Deafness where either you had a hearing aid or you had sign language to communicate. Going to the festival affirmed to me that my conditioning was wrong and was rooted in audism.
Things can’t be all or nothing for me regarding my being. I am in between multiple worlds. Even with being in between these worlds, they still connect and overlap to create my own form of balance.
Four things for you!
Help a young trans child stay with her loving mother! A friend of mine who is a single mother of a Trans girl currently urgently needs funds to help her win custody of her child.
New Disabled South Rising released a statement on how cop city negatively impacts the Disabled community. Stop cop city!
This read, “On the Rights of the Child,” was really thought-provoking especially considering the ongoing attack on Trans youth.
I related so much to this experience that Imani shared.
Self-promo Things
A new episode of my podcast will be out next week with special guest Sarah Faith Gottesdiener! Keep your eyes peeled for the transcript in next week’s newsletter.
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my newsletter, and I look forward to sharing things with you soon! I hope that you are staying safe and well. <3
