Discovering My Gender Fluid Identity

When a person is trying to discover themself, they are trying to find something solid. A single word to describe themselves. When it comes to being gender fluid, it’s like trying to find a puzzle piece that keeps changing shape.

From the time I was little, I was different. And I knew it. Some days I was more than happy to be a female. I would wear skirts and dresses and dress myself up and fall in love with the way I looked. Others it felt like my skin was too loose. I would obsess over my chest and how my breasts were far too noticeable. Or I would wonder why I was born a girl. I felt like I needed to be a boy. And on some days, I couldn’t figure out which side of the line I was meant to be on. I couldn’t figure out if there was ever a line at all.

During the time when I began to notice this part of myself, I only knew of two types of person. There were straight “normal” people and LGBT. Those were the only letters I knew: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. It felt like I was a poorly drawn polygon and everyone was telling me I was a square.

When I tried to bring up this problem with people, they told me that I shouldn’t be labeling myself. High school is a time for labels, though, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Sexuality was difficult, but gender even more so. For everyone there were two options: boy or girl. I was both and neither, but some days I was one more than the other. The labels haunted me.

Then I stumbled across a new term: “non-binary.” What a funny term it was to me. As an individual who doesn’t conform to the gender binary, I latched onto it with white knuckles. Some days it fit more than others, but it was never quite right. It was still the best I had when it came to determining who the hell I might be from day to day.

College was harder than I expected. I thought that shedding all my high school acquaintances would make it easier. I hoped that I would no longer be conforming to their ideas of me and that would give me a step up. It didn’t. Even when I shaved my head and started wearing makeup, trying to give myself an edgier look, it didn’t work.

I gave up. I had no community and I truly believed it. I was lonely and didn’t know what I was. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So I picked myself up and left everything I knew behind.

Arriving in Spokane, I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I didn’t know where I was going to go. I decided to start by changing my name, something masculine that could be gender neutral too. Will. Not William or Willow or Wilhelmina, just Will. I’d been going by the name for a few years online, but hearing it out loud was an entirely new experience.

I downloaded a dating app and, after a few days, I matched with someone. We sent a few messages, traded numbers, and next thing I knew we were seeing each other regularly. But there was still something missing. I toyed with the terms I knew.

Transgender wasn’t right. I didn’t want to be a man. I still felt like a girl on some days. Androgynous might work, but it didn’t fit on the days when I felt solid. Non-binary was the closest there was to it, but sometimes I didn’t feel like I was in the middle of the spectrum. I felt like I was swinging wildly from one side to the other. Then I saw something.

“That gender fluid problem when you have to pack two sets of clothes for vacation because you don’t know what gender you’re going to be that week.” - Unknown

I don’t recall what the rest of the tweet said. But the term jumped out. Gender fluid. I looked it up. The real dictionary and Wikipedia had little to offer me, but after some searching I found the definition.

“A gender fluid person is someone who fluctuates between more than one gender, or between having a gender and not having one. They do not stick to one gender, or lack thereof, for their entire life. It is not related to a person's genitalia, nor their sexual orientation.” - Urban Dictionary

It fit. No matter what day it was, it still fit. On days when I was feminine, on days when I was masculine, even on days when I was everything and nothing, it was still the term that I had been looking for.

I quickly went out, searching for more people like myself. Next thing I knew, I was making friends and discovering changing pronoun pins for when you fluctuated between he, she, and they. I realized that I could subtly present my own identity through how I pinned my mohawk, pulling it back to make myself masculine, letting it part naturally to be more feminine, or pinning it to the side when I wasn’t really sure. All of a sudden, my life made some sort of sense—it made all sorts of sense even. I haven’t shared my discovery with many yet, but hopefully someday I’ll be able to scream it from mountaintops and let it be heard by everyone.