Content

Though I usually start with a definition of the title, I will start this one with mine.

A binary exists because humans feel a need to come up with as few categories as possible when trying to comprehend the limitlessness that is the world around us.

To that end, just to keep it simple, there are many times two of everything.

Two directions, right and left.

Two outcomes, right and wrong.

Two sexes, male and female.

Two genders, man and woman.

Two sexualities, straight and gay.

Two methods of expression, masculine and femme.

These are not discrete categories.

These are both endpoints on a spectrum of outcomes.

A min and max, for my statistics folks.

But what exists at the very center of it all?

Like, the very fucking center?

That’s where I feel I’m at.

The very fucking center of the tootsie roll pop of existence.

In general, even.

Why?

Because I do not feel I have been anything beyond my nucleus.

My core.

The core of my expression.

I feel humans are infinitely capable, just look at it.

Humans can train for their entire lives for a particular sport, art, or specialty.

They are like well-honed swords used for their craft.

They are the sheerest expressions of their will when their will is what they express as true.

When they do not, however, what do they become?

Well. Just a well of potential, in my opinion.

Or at least, maybe, that is how I am made to feel I am.

An untapped well of potential.

Never truly committing to anything.

And yet committing to the line above in true.

It's hard to commit to a way of being when your way of being isn't found to be 'in scope' of what the lexicon gives room for identifying as nothing.

Truly.

When a parent feels more inclined to commit themselves to their desires to be right, what happens to a child is the experience of invalidation beyond which one can comprehend as even above matters of life and death.

So much so, in fact, that one cannot truly feel themselves unless they permit themselves to occupy an altered state of thought.

Yeah, I said it.

Sobriety sucks.

That sucks to say.

It sucks more to hear.

To type, even.

But it’s true.

When I am sober, I am forced to listen to my worst of thoughts.

All. Fucking. Day.

You do not matter.

You are not good enough.

You are a failure.

You do not measure up.

You will never be what you desire.

You will never be what they desire.

These thoughts chase me through the day and exhaust me frequently.

Thus I drink. Or I smoke.

Regardless, this essay is about something else.

What causes me to exhibit the symptoms of an addict?

Perhaps the existence of the gender binary, actually.

Perhaps the oppressive ignorance of the patriarchy, really.

Perhaps the feeling of not belonging to a particular camp of thought.

I do not identify with what the mirror tells me I look like based on societal perceptions of what a 'man' is.

I never have, actually.

Call it Imposter Syndrome, call it a cry for attention.

I call it an existence between the realms of masculine and femme.

A calling to not ascribe to the norms assigned to what we call gender.

By the way, in case you were wondering, fuck gender reveal parties.

Fuck them all.

Gender reveal, or may I call them assignment parties, are the first of many decisions we make for a child. A path of expectation for them to walk down toward what WE view as 'the way to be' in life.

We decide for the child the first of many crucial paths they will take in life, without knowing the impact it has on them or their feelings about themselves as 'enough'.

Deciding the gender of the child is to impose a set of rules and restrictions on how they must express themselves in life.

To err outside of the constraints and will imposed on them is to be a shame on the family itself.

On its beliefs.

On its religion, even.

For if one is to subvert the cause of one’s being, then one must be subversive in name.

A fool, prancing daintily forward with gusto and pride within their new faith.

For my religion is in fact one of subversion.

One of upending whatever is the status quo.

Even if the status quo is but one of which I have produced.

Change is constant.

We are what we repeatedly do.

If I change constantly, am I myself change itself?

Maybe not the change I expected it would be.

But still some of the changes I wanted to see.

Perhaps that's all that can be.

A world: one with room for thee.

Now that's a thought that can sit with me.