the fluidity of identities

july 3, 2021

i've been reflecting on spectrums of identity, so 

many words to describe how we live and breathe.

i guess i always felt at home with people who were queer. and because queer folk have always been a part of my life, because i had people i could be myself with, i have experienced advantages that come with the love and security inherent with a positive environment/community. 

i had arrived at a more isolated way of living by the time i calmed down from the waves of hormones influencing my decisions. i am content with the assortment of friends who've claimed pages upon pages of the chapters of my life. and for me, since relationships are the point of being here, i already feel settled into a decent life, sense of purpose/meaning, being. 

it has taken me more time to accomplish certain physical tasks. certain emotional ones as well. but mentally, spiritually, i have not yearned. i have not felt unfulfilled. i am joyous and filled to the brim with love when my soul is at ease. i know how to recenter. i have a good grasp on how i work. i've spent time with my thoughts and feelings since i was younger, and the ongoing dialogue with facets of myself have supported an intimacy with myself that i'm proud of. i quite like how i've developed, and the older i get the less i care how well others recognize my magnificence, i just want to better radiate. share.

i encountered intersections within my own identity once i acknowledged that i was attracted to girls and boys. that was my introduction to the idea that there was an entire subcommunity of people within the larger population.

september 1, 2025 update since i kinda left that stream of thought suddenly...

there are spectrums and then the intersections of our experiences that remind us we are more alike than not. 

it's interesting that i focused solely on the ways i did experience acceptance, because it's hard to ignore the rejections i experienced as well. in the definitions, the examples i saw of womanhood, i did not see myself. i didn't see a future version of myself. i didn't see a present version. i saw caricatures. i saw young women pretending, trying on different lewks and going mostly with the one that seemed to compliment their personality. but usually still feminine. usually still with something that the patriarchy approved of. even on the margins there seemed to be rules that i didn't understand or that i couldn't abide. i felt like i would never be accepted as a real woman because i would never have children. and the fact it was by choice made me a special kind of traitor since all women are valued for is their wombs and what they represent of fertility and creation. i had no use for this facet of my body. so i needed a different version of womanhood to look up to. 

queer as in i don't want to have more babies. i want to be well enough to help take care of the babies who already exist. 

queer as in i don't understand your need to reproduce, but i support your parenthood journey. queer as in gently parenting myself. queer as in i'll probably always have to live with friends to get by, and no i'm not secretly sleeping with my housemates.

i think what i was getting at a few years ago is that i've had the privilege of accepting myself from a younger age than some people, even though there were aspects of the heteropatriarchy i had to work at unpacking within myself, i was at an advantage seeing some examples of queerness rather than none from the time i was young. i feel like i was able to come to a more integrated state of being sooner since there were key aspects of my identity that i didn't have to take decades to better understand. i knew i was queer from the time i was around 10. i knew i wasn't going to have kids by the time i was 14. i knew i didn't think like other people as soon as i was singled out for the scholars program at school where they shipped us once a week to an entirely different school where we had classes that i wished could be how school was all the time, for everyone. down to the way i spent hours alone in my room, content as could be. even though it took me decades to find the vocabulary that described my neurocognitive experience, there was other language to identify various components of my self that allowed me a kind of empowerment. because knowing ourselves is empowering. knowing and accepting and loving ourselves enough to keep learning, keep caring, keep tending to the parts of our identities that require it. of course i had difficulty understanding my needs when they weren't really accounted for. no one was talking about the asexual spectrum when i was in high school. no one was talking about polyamory. we've come a long way in just another twenty years or so, and i'm excited to see where the queer community is in another twenty years. 

these subcommunities are ways for us to celebrate diversity within that common thread of humanity. supporting third spaces where people of various communities can come together is essential to our cultural wellness. nurturing bridges between communities is how to continue to resist fascism. i will keep doing my part in the ways i can!