Midnight Baby

When I was around seven or eight I would go swimming in the local pool fully clothed. I remember sitting on the side of the pool, waiting for the life guard to end "adult swim" so that I could get back into the deep end and resume my training to reach the dark depths at the bottom of the pool where all the dead leaves were.

The whistle blew, and I was back in business.

“You still have your clothes on!” another kid pointed out. They must have thought I’d forgotten.

“I know,” I said, comfortable in my own skin, comfortable in my gender presentation.

What was the big deal with that particular outfit? Why did I love it so much that I also wore it swimming? Back then, I didn’t have words. I just knew that a girl’s style bathing suite didn’t feel right and going in just shorts no t-shirt was off limits. And that that outfit was like magic. Wearing that t-shirt and shorts from the boys section made me feel like who I enjoyed being.

WHAT IS GENDER EUPHORIA?

Not until about ten to fifteen years later would I begin to hear the term “gender euphoria” used to reference how certain clothes, haircuts, and even body modifications can make you feel that same thing I felt in my favorite outfit that summer. You feel great. You feel like you. And when you become more yourself, you feel amazing, you feel EUPHORIC!

Why do we feel this? I’m sure someone has a scientific answer. But I’d say it’s because we are being our true selves, the selves we came to this earth to be, the selves that have a place in the great divine dance, the great divine game. We’re no longer fighting the flow of life, and we’re not swimming upstream or forcing ourselves into a role that was never ours to play. Instead, when we honestly become the person our beings and our divine DNA ask us to be, we experience “oneness”. We are one with the universe, god, and the divine. We are divine. We are whole.

Maybe you’ve had that experience through meditation, prayer, plant medicine ceremonies, or psychedelics, and you know what I’m talking about. Being at one with the universe is highly euphoric, and it give the seeker a great depth of peace. Anxiety melts. Everything is right. Everything is in order. And “it” is all unfolding how it is suppose to unfold.

That summer, wearing my favorite outfit felt like magic. I felt like the hero of my story. I felt like my ideal me, and I felt at peace and complete.

It’s funny because recently another gender-non-conforming buddy from my hometown told me they used to do the same thing at the swimming pool. I didn’t know them back then, but knowing them now, it makes a lot of sense.

FASHION AS PROTECTION

In those days, I was lucky to have a lot of freedom from typical societal expectations. We were homeschooled, and my mom wanted to raise us like “free range chickens” she says.

No school meant no dress code and less time studying because you didn’t have to do “busy work” to fill the day or wait on other students to understand a concept before moving on to the next topic.

I could run around without a shirt or shoes, explore the woods around the neighborhood, and spend summer nights outside playing games and spying on the neighbors. My bothers and I got into everything, tried everything we could. Each day was a new adventure and we made the most of each one.

But at some point around seven years old, (which funnily enough is when developmental psychology claims a child can begin to choose their gender presentation), my parents began to place gender limits.

Suddenly I had to wear a shirt and I couldn’t wrestle with the neighbor boys. It just “wasn’t right”, my parents explained. I was still invited to go on hikes, but less and less would I be allowed to go on overnight camping trips. Again, it just wasn’t right, me being the only one in the group socialized as a girl sleeping near all those boys. Not long after, my mom presented me with a bra. Again, I didn’t understand it, but it was “just necessary” for some reason. I cried and cried. I hated it.

Here’s the thing. Before my parents began to socialize me as a separate entity from my brothers, as a girl, we all did the same thing.

We all learned to shave our faces with my dad. We all dressed up in glittering body suites and played ballerinas. We all saved up for camouflage and played army. We all played with my mom’s red lipstick as war paint. And my older brother dressed up as a bride and married a neighbor boy in a ceremony we held while rolling down a hill on skates and rollerblades. Dressing in what I would later come to know as “drag” was no big deal. We were absurdly creative and nothing was off limits.

Until we reached a certain age and social expectations set in.

Back then, my parents were trying to protect me with their ideas of what a girl should look like. Fashion is protection. If you present right, society will treat you right. And if you’re a girl, that means dressing the part so that one day a man will want you bad enough to ask your father to let him have you, and your father will give you over and all that preparation will come to a culmination and the girl will have her means of survival— marriage.

We lived in South Carolina, a placed referred to as the “buckle of the Bible Belt” due to its high concentration of churches and religious communities. And our community had a cult following of a man name Bob Jones with rules like no “interracial dating”, no physical contact between separate sexes, and parents must disown their child if the child came out as gay.

And things like getting a job as a non-conforming person? I doubt it was happening there back then.

So as much as I blamed my parents for the drama of being forced to put on a female costume whenever we went to something social, in retrospect, my parents were doing the only thing they knew how to do to keep me safe in that world— they used fashion as a form of protection.

But those skirts, dresses, and blouses had me feeing vulnerable and frustrated. And only when I could wear my soccer shorts and t-shirts or any of my other favorite outfits did I feel safe and at home.

THE “MIDDLE YEARS”

After eight years old, things got intense. Lots of crying and stress over clothing and gender roles.

This stuff gives me mixed feelings to write about. I still struggle to not feel angry or ashamed and I hate it when my mom sends me pictures from the days when we all had to dress “correctly” for society like the days we went to church. I have smiles in the pictures because we had to smile. And I had longish hair for more time than I wanted to because I was afraid to cut it as short as I wanted to (I would find the courage I later on).

I have shame thinking about my teenage years because I was so often afraid or shamed for my body or just being who I was. I’m ashamed that I “gave in” but being a kid, I didn’t really have a choice. So I fought it sometimes but had to keep quiet until I moved out. I disassociated and survived, disconnected, unable to be my dream self.

Obviously I still made friends and found ways to enjoy myself, but interactions with my parents felt strained and volatile, especially the interactions with my mom who was tasked with enforcing female socialization standards.

My mom doesn’t understand why I still feel hurt over being forced to wear girly clothing. I think I felt humiliated and punished by it. My freedom to be me was taken away and I was criticized for not fitting the female stereotype required in the area I grew up in. That weighs on you when you’re confronted with it multiple times a week for several years. You get scared to be seen because at any time you could be breaking some rule or hidden expectation without knowing it. My body always felt clenched and stressed, and my posture became that of someone hiding. There were moments of escape, but generally I felt a fear of being judged and my body internalized it.

I’m sure I was brave in a lot of ways, but looking back makes me cringe. And here I am looking back. Cringe.

Ok, back to the timeline.

EVERYONE LOVES ANIME GIRLS

Up until the age of eight, I wore whatever my brothers wore. We were a family of hand-me-downs and thrift stores, so I had the same jeans, the same hoodies, the same Umbro soccer shorts as my brothers. There were a few “little girls t shirts” too, but there were simple shirts that literally any body could have worn. Nothing too bad about that. No dysphoria.

My mom did force me to wear some extremely uncomfortable frilly dresses to church and painful sweaters that were too tight for my head, but “beauty is pain” she’d say and rules were rules. Girls had to wear long dressed and skirts to church. It wasn’t a matter of choice.

But if I wasn’t at church, I was learning to read at the kitchen table or playing games outside— all in my “normal clothes”.

But at age eight, it came time to socialize me as a girl and my mom had to look outside the house for female clothes. We went to department stores in looking for two or three female passing outfits. My mom felt pressure to not be judged by her child’s appearance, and the whole experience felt forced and humiliating.

First of all, nothing in the teen girls section was loose fitting enough for the religious rules. And the boy’s section was off-limits. So my mom eventually found the “petites” section which is what they call the “old ladies section”. This demographic was short enough to fit a kid and conservative enough to pass within the groups we belonged. So after lots of frustration and crying, we bought two colors of short kaki pants, and three button down shirts. They were OK…. Not too tight, not too girly, but not really what I wanted either. Just OK. And annoyingly cut for a woman.

Probably a year after that, my sweet grandma took me shopping and apart from the boys section being off-limits, I could pick whatever I wanted. I got some camouflage cargo pants which I wore every day till I outgrew them, and two polo shirts with surf writing on the back of the collars. Much better than the old lady clothes.

When I was thirteen, I began shopping for myself at the Goodwill thrift store. It was easy to get what I wanted at a price a thirteen-year-old could afford. I began picking out my own clothes and no one ever questioned it. My mom was busy with my brothers, so she’d gladly drop me off and let me do my thing. Plus she didn’t have to take me shopping anymore.

There I discovered that my wardrobe fit into three separate categories: “normal clothes” , outfits I saw boys wear, and outfits I’d seen anime girls wear. I also found camisole undershirts that were popular back then and they flattened my chest, it was nice.

No one questioned my “normal clothes” because, well, they looked normal on me. Androgynous and different from popular culture, but normal on me. Plus being homeschooled, well most of us didn’t have cool clothes so it was normal to be abnormal.

The boy outfits I rarely wore out of my house or the woods, only for occasions like hiking trips, the skate park, or my short bout with the Civil Air Patrol (I wanted to join the air force back then lol, free army uniforms, a sense of belonging, adventures, air planes, and travel duh).

And the anime girl? I mean, if you have to present as a girl, that’s the best way to do it. Tight zip-up shirts, flare pants, hair up with little pieces falling around the face. Everyone loves anime girls.

Wearing girl outfits was always far more exhausting than the “normal clothes”. Why? Because being around people is a show, an act in society, and I felt forced to play a girl way too much. It got old fast.

If I didn’t have to be around people, I’d just hang out in my room or in the woods, alone often, away from rules and social codes. I could be whoever I wanted to be.

And the church outfits? Those became an act too. They had to be long skirts, so I found long hippy clothes at head shops and also made some. People complimented them because they’d never seen clothes like that before in those circle in South Carolina. 

I also had this really cool pineapple outfit that we had custom made because stores didn't sell clothing that was long and loose for church. It was a long straight “jumper” style dress made from green pineapple fabric, then a white collared shirt underneath, and this hand bag I found that was actually just a pineapple. I kind of wish I still had it for those moments I want to "cross dress", but honestly I'm not sure I'd be ready to wear it again, as I had to to cross dress so often as a kid.

CROSS-DRESSING

Whenever I wear an article of clothing that is “very” gendered, I feel like I’m cross dressing. And back then, I felt like I was cross-dressing a lot. I was cross-dressing in my church clothes, cross-dressing in my “teenage anime girl” clothes, and also cross-dressing when I’d wear two sports bras to flatten my chest under a t-shirt and those cargo shorts the boys would wear back then.

It was weird having to cross-dress so much, and as we didn’t talk about things in the family, my survival technique was mainly centered on dissociation and smiling. Just get through it so you can return home, take off the costume and spend your time on more important stuff like making art and movies, building forts in the woods, and figuring out how to run an electric scooter through the under ground tunnel below our house.

By that point, I knew clothing was costuming. And being a Leo sun, wearing costumes came naturally. But it was also exhausting. I have a Piscis moon, which means that more than anything I crave a deep connection and understanding with the collective. I just wanted to wear something that wasn’t too colorful, not too tight or body focused, and would let me exist without having to pretend to be a “man” or “woman”. I felt tired of the game at times.

Cross-dressing is fun when you get to choose to do it, but it can be exhausting when your survival depends on it.

HIGH SCHOOL RULES

In my high school years, I finally went to school and learned a new set of social codes. It was a religious school run by the same cult entity Bob Jones. And the dress code was very rigid and binary. Girls had to have long hair, long skirts, loose tops, high necklines, and for special occasions, tights and hoes on their legs. All from the women’s section of course.

Boys had to have an extremely short haircut, shave their faces, wear button up shirts, dress slacks, and for special occasions, ties and suite coats. We were not allowed to wear graphics on the clothes, or have references to punk, emo, or rock and roll. And when skinny jeans became a trend, the one boy who wore them was called a fag and the administration quickly outlawed the fashion.

What’s funny is that even in this world of entirely un-cool clothing, there were still social signifiers in that fashion bubble that let people know exactly how cool you were, which group and social class you belonged too, etc. I’m proud to say people started wearing colorful hippy skirts after my first year there. I was so weird people thought I was cool.

Anyway, art, fashion, imagination, and movie nights were my survival.

I focused on good grades and the fun of finally having a live audience. I made crazy outfits, tried public speaking, made friends with other “unsocialized” kids, and sang the Canadian national anthem in the shower with my new bestie after Physical Education class.

There was so much injustice inside that world, it just wasn’t worth fighting openly. I rebelled in secret ways and smiled at the administration.

BOY OR GIRL?

I finished high school in my third year as a hybrid student: half the time homeschooled, half the time in a community college. I could wear whatever I wanted that last year.

Strangers at the community college asked if I was a witch. The neighbor who rode to class with me asked why I had to dress so weird. My mom said I looked like a lesbian so I avoided seeing her in the mornings before class. I dressed really cool, and I know other people thought so and sometimes said so. But annoyingly, people love to point out what's different. I liked fashion. I wanted to be me. And I wanted to fit in… but those things didn’t seem to go together. I would make these awesome outfits but then be afraid of being seen.

Time passed.

In college there was no real dress code and I settled on a mostly black wardrobe influenced by what I’d seen Europeans wear in the fashion blogs I followed. Easy enough.

I discovered H&M and got myself a cool fake leather jacket there. I had black skinny jeans and a collection of simple t-shirts under which I wore flattening sports bras. All good.

One time I wore a skirt to class and everyone said it was like the kilt Kanye West had worn on tour. This time, my peers understood I was cross-dressing.

As college was ending, I sold my things and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. I would leave South Carolina for good and travel until I found a place that felt like home. There I could develop into my true self away from the eyes of former friends and family.

Of course, moving locations didn’t really fix anything.

But something did happen pretty early on into my travels that changed my trajectory. I “fell in love” with a queer man who would later tell me he was born with three chromosomes, XXY, meaning he was actually both male and female. Intersex. And that as a teenager he was forced to choose between becoming a male or female, as being neither was not a choice back then.

People have always asked me if I was a boy or girl, and I would usually say, “I don’t know”. In this case, when he asked me and I said “I don’t know”, he then asked me if I was trans. I didn’t know what that was. I just thought that some people changed their bodies to become one of two genders and that was called trans. I panicked.

No, that isn’t me! I’m not currently changing my body.

Later, I would become curious and go to Reddit to learn all about top surgery, hormone replacement therapy, and the experience of transitioning to a different gender. I felt called to it and read everything I could. I did my best to pass as a boy for the next several years, or at least, not pass as a girl, and I did want top surgery, but I didn’t feel comfortable fully transition to a man. I just wanted to be less woman.

INTUITION

I changed my name a year or two later upon returning to the US because I wanted something less gendered. I would later change it two more times trying to settle on what felt right, doubting myself, and then trying again.

I eventually began to understand that being Non-Binary is also a gender, and that some people just don’t identify as male or female. And that yes, this is trans too. I read that trans just means you don’t identify with the gender assigned at birth. It doesn’t mean you have to become a man or a women. My experience began to make a little more sense.

I learned there were more people out there like me. That you could choose a new name that felt better, and choose clothes that made you feel good, and that neither identifying as what society calls male nor female is actually pretty cool. Gender euphoria is a good thing, not a guilty pleasure. And feeling at home in and embracing your experience connects you to the divine, despite everything I’d been raised to believe.

I learned that I was normal, and that there was a long history of non-binary, trans, and queer people holding honored roles in society before the Catholic Church tried to wipe them out (this happened around the same time they went killing the powerful women known as witches, and during the colonization of America and other continents).

I’m becoming braver. I’m still scared of people seeing me but I also enjoy having an audience, so, I force myself to be seen and heard and to make steady eye contact. I am becoming braver and happier and more myself. It’s scary but the changes make my life better so I keep going, finding oneness with the world. Finding allies helps and I can’t wait till interactions with my family aren’t so uncomfortable. I’m trying to be good about explaining to them what they need to know and being patient while they digest something they’ve never heard of.

Despite everything I’d been brain washed to believe, I have always known who I am. And lead by my intuition, I’m on an adventure to become more and more that person. Not only do I owe this to myself, but I owe it to the world as a whole. This is my contribution and the universe is on my side.

I know who I am, at least on a basic level. And that knowledge grows as I keep going. I’m not an outsider, I’m actually an integral part of It All and I can become one with the world by being me, not who I think they want me to be.