San Diego

I realise I never explained what my last straw was, as far a syncing myself.  It was simple really: I went to San Diego.

San Deigo was like a breath of fresh air: it was Sunny, it was warm, and it was a merciful break from the gray prison of Olympia.  But it was also so uncomfortable.  Beach culture.  I grew up in it and I Love and Hate it.  I think I always will.  It reinforces physical beauty and causes a super skewering of 'male' and 'female', ;masculine' and feminine', leaving o room for in-betweens or others.  The socioeconomic setting I was in also played a huge roll, but that's another post.

It was in San Diego that I finally reached my breaking point.  Wearing the bathing suit I'd owned since I was Freshman in college--alas, so long ago--felt awkward, because it felt wrong to section my body of that way.  I don't have warm weather men's clothes, so I had to wear my old clothes, which forced me--kicking and seething--into the 'female' gender box.  The only way I made it through that lovely vacation was telling myself that it was ok, that no one was looking at me--Black female body on display-- and that it was just for now.  But then I realised, that's what I'm constantly telling myself when situations are beyond my control  But was this one really?  Didn't i have control over how I present myself to society?  How long was I going to shove myself in a box that I had outgrown, that I had never belonged in in the first place?

I came back to Olympia in a fit.  I was angry at how I had gendered myself on the trip, how I had been gendered by strangers, how society created this harsh dichotomy based on some silly anatomy, and just angry in general because I had played a passive role in all of this. And it was this anger that pushed me to take the plunge. That weekend I found myself at Value Village buying the beginnings of a new wardrobe, a wardrobe that reflects how I want the world to view me and how I need to be seen.  I'm done denying my Authenticity and playing the Oppressor's game.  Life's too short to subject myself to that misery any longer.