everything sucks

a walk through

          when i was 7, my mom asked me what i wanted to be for Halloween. i had no idea, so i looked in a magazine of over priced and cheaply made costumes for ideas. i turned page after page of princess, fairy's , prom queens, etc. etc. i was beginning to give up when i stumbled onto the page of boys costumes and there it was, the most perfect idea for Halloween. it was this vampire outfit with a flowing white shirt, black pants, and crimson cape. very generic but i fell in love at the sight. so i got up and ran into the living room to tell my mother i had figured out what i wanted to be and told her but forgetting to show a picture. that's on me i guess i should have know i needed to show her a picture, but i was 7. i wasn't thinking past the next second. anyway, she agrees to let me be a vampire and tells me she will get the costume next time she's out. i wait patiently for the day she comes home with a bag from the Halloween store. when she finally does i can hardly hold me excitement, and i grab the bag and run into my room to go try it on immediately. that white shirt and red cape had been in my dreams every night since i saw that picture. When i pull the package out of the bag my face falls and i'm overcome with confusion. in the bag is a black and purple dress. it's long and tight to the body looking and a high collar with feminine everything about it. all i could think is, what's this? where was the red cape? my mom walks in and asks me if i like it and i stare up at her in confusion. where's the white shirt and cape and pants i ask her. i feel like i'm going to cry at this point. her expression then matches mine and she asks what i'm on about. i go and get the magazine i had kept by my bed so i could look at the costume whenever i got particularly inpatient. i show my mom what i wanted and she laughs. she actually laughed. not in a mocking way, but it still hurt. why was she laughing? she gets this look on her face that i still can't decipher and she says "emily. that's a boys costume. you're a girl. you wear girl costumes. now try on the one i got you" the amount of disappointment that filled my body when she said that was unmeasurable. but i aim to please so i tried it on and she said i looked beautiful and i grinned and said i loved it because i was supposed to love it and i liked seeing my mother happy, i liked seeing i made her happy with my words. and that halloween i wore a long dress as a vampire and didn't complain once but i think i knew then and there that i wasn't exactly like the other girls i was friends with, that i wanted to be something other than me but i brushed it off and went about eating my candy and forgetting about it in the morning.

       when i was 12, i wanted to smell like a boy. i used to sniff all the boys Cologne and body wash's thinking they smelled so much better than woman's. i think everyone just assumed that i was boy crazy and that's why i liked it. i knew though that i didn't really like boys. if i ever talked about boys it was more out of me thinking i was supposed to and not because any had really caught my eye beyond my fiction loves like Remus Lupin, Sirius Back, and Percy Jackson. back to the point, i wanted to smell like a boy and i knew my bother had a bag of his axe body sprays and things of that kind in his closet. i made a plan one day to go and take something of his to make myself smell like i had always wanted. i waited and waited and waited for the day he wasn't home and i could sneak into his room and take the axe body spray. when the day finally came i could hardly contain myself and had so much panic id be caught and i had no idea how to explain myself. the house was quite so i tipped up the stairs into his room, and bolted for the closet and grabbed the first bottle of spray on top and ran back into my room downstairs as fast as i possibly could, being quite no longer a priority. i locked the door and started at my new found possession in my hands. i don't remember what kind it was all i remember was it was green and smelled like everything i wanted. i sprayed myself and sat and smiled in it for hours. whenever the smell would fad, i'd spray more. i did this until my mom got home from work and she found me smelling like a Hollister on my bedroom floor, took the can of body spray away, and told to not do that again because i wasn't supposed to smell like that. the next week she came home with a bottle of perfume that smelt of baby powder and i was told that this was more suitable for me because "you're a girl emily. girls wear perfume." so i wore it a few times, but i hated it. i did it to please her. as i did most things.

      at the age of 15, i wanted to try on boxers. my friend used to wear them when she slept and i wanted to try some. she was smaller than me so i couldn't wear hers but i couldn't ask my mom or dad to get me any. they would throw a fit. so naturally i stole a pair from my father. he had bought a new pack and i was doing laundry so before he got them i tired on a pair. they were too lose and baggy on me but they felt somehow...right? i don't know it was like they fit in all the wrong ways but they felt so right. obviously i couldn't keep them so i folded them and never touched them again. but that day i started questioning myself. that same fear that filled me when i first started questioning my sexuality, was coming back full force. i got so scared because all i needed was another thing to make my parents hate me. just like my realization of my sexuality I pushed it into the back of my head never to be thought about again or so I thought.

     when i was 17, i realized that there are more than two genders. i had spent so long with this idea in my head that maybe i was trans. that boy and girl were the only two options i could pick from. i was living my life with such a black and white perspective that i had no idea to all the grey surrounding me. i remember looking at pride flags one day and looking into their meanings, and i stumbled upon a new word, ✨non binary✨.  i read and read and read for hours about my new found revelation. it was everything i had always felt compiled into one concise word. i had never been able to put it together and, blame it on the small conservative town, didn't even know a thing like this existed. i was allowed to want to wear makeup and dresses and heals and be feminine but also allowed to wear tux's and boxers and Cologne and be masculine and at the same time feel no attachment to identifying as either. i felt seen in a way i never had before. granted, as i'm telling you about this grand realization i had, i didn't actually tell anyone except my girlfriend at the time and my best friend but it was still a step in the right direction.

i am now 19, have changed my name to Grey. at least that's what all my friends call me and what i introduce myself as. i took some steps backs and have realized that gender is hard and that im not 100% on the label of it but i do know that i am happy as of right now with my they/them pronouns and my more neutral name. i know i have so much farther to go before i am comfortable in my skin about my gender, but i wanted to talk about a few tell tell signs that i had to work though and hopefully help someone else.