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You were not going to get divorced.

You signed the divorce papers two years ago. After about three years of marriage, you couldn't take the loneliness anymore. Simon always told you that he wouldn't be a good husband. He always told you that he would be gone for work all the time. Hell, you got used to him being gone when you lived together pre-marriage. What you never would have predicted is... the drinking. He wasn't a mean drunk. No, he never laid a hand on you. But he was a sad drunk. Simon was miserable to be around.

Eventually, you found out it was because of Johnny's death. He didn't tell you Johnny was dead. No, that would be too easy. John Price told you about it when he invited you to the funeral. You stayed married to Simon another year after Johnny died. How could you leave him alone after such pain?

Things never got better. He only became more and more unhappy. He wouldn't cry or speak about his friend's death in a healthy way. He would drink, become more miserable, drink more, and pass out at the kitchen table. You hadn't kissed him for six months. You hadn't hugged him for eight. You hadn't made love for almost a year. Simon truly became his namesake: a Ghost.

So, you divorced him. Tears were on the papers when you served them to him, your signature smudged with ink. "I'm going to live with my mother for a while," you told him. You sniffled, wiping your eyes free of the tears that gathered while you spoke. "I want your things to be gone in six months... Hopefully that's enough time."

He signed them without argument, just muttering a gruff, "Alright."

You still wear the ring. You loved that man for seven years before the divorce. You love him still, two years later. The ring is beautiful. Sometimes, you still tell men you're taken. John checks on you from time to time.

Today... is your anniversary. It would be the fifth year of your marriage. You lie on your sofa, staring at the ceiling. God, you miss the man he was. He would have been a wonderful husband. You felt lonely when you were married to him. You feel lonely now. Maybe if you had just stayed married... maybe if you had just tried to help him more, or tried to be a better support-

You kiss your ring. "I love you, Simon."

You shouldn't have gotten divorced.

It shouldn't have ended this way.

A knock on your door startles you, pulling you from your thoughts. You stand up to answer it, despite the fact that you haven't fixed your hair, that you haven't had a shower, that you have been crying all day long. At your door is a sober young man, his blonde hair cut high and tight, his brown eyes clear and bright. You've not seen this man since Johnny died. "Hey, baby," Simon says, his voice gruff but not slurred. "I've been going to AA for two years."

You blink up at him. "Simon?"

"I needed to see you again," he whispers. "I understand- I-I-I know- I know you divorced me-" He glances down at your ring. "But I cleaned up. And- And I-I missed you."

You've never heard him stammer before. "You look good," you manage to say after a few moments of stunned silence.

"You look terrible," he chuckles, then catches himself. "Sorry, that was- that was rude."

"You're stammering. Like a normal person," you say.

"I'm quite nervous," he admits. "I'm not sure if... you love me anymore."

"I do." Your voice cracks. "Simon, I never stopped loving you. But after Johnny died, you became a - for lack of a better word - a ghost."

He huffs a breath through his nose at that. "I know. I didn't know what to do with the grief. And then you left me, and it got worse."

Since the discovery of my transmaverine identity - a transgender identity that is not masculine, feminine, androgynous, or neutral but is defined by a strong inner conviction of gender that is ungoverned by external influence - I’ve had the time to truly explore the label in deeper and deeper ways the more I sat with it. It is maverine in nature, with a quality similar to that of maveriquehood - outherine, unambiguous, and autonomous. There is a distinct “otherness” to the identity, though some might describe it as abinary, aporine, or outherine if they could categorize it. However, my transmaverine identity does not feel outherine at all, or that it fits any kind of category.

This introspection started one day when I decided to archive a ton of information on outherinities and all their subset qualities, based on the three categories of outherine identities laid out in the original definition of the term. I found that my maverine identity didn’t really fit in with any of the categories - not in Category One which were the “entirely new and apart from” masculine, feminine, androgynous, and neutral, not in Category Two which can be compared to those four, and not in Category Three which is dedicated to “uncommon combinations.” It seemed my maverinity didn’t fit in anywhere, which made me think that maybe this term wasn’t for me after all because isn’t maverine considered an outherine identity? It seemed to fall right into Category One.

I was always obsessed with categorizing my genders in specific ways, sorting them into all these labeled boxes just so I could keep track of where they lie within the enormous galaxy of existing genders. To me, maverinity needed to fit into this system in order for it to feel like a tangible part of my identity - everything needed a name. For the maverine part of my identity, I viewed it as: Nonbinary, then abinary, then aporine, then outherine - broader terms into more specific terms. I needed to make sure my maverine identity was nested into a larger umbrella term which itself had an umbrella term of its own, and so on, just to solidify this part of me the same way I did with my aporagender identity. I knew my manhood was nonbinary, I knew my aporagender was neutral, so I needed to know where maverinity was supposed to be.

Over time, it was clear that I was creating stringencies for a gender quality that is meant to represent freedom from governance, that isn’t meant to be forced into all these different categories. Maverinity is beautiful in that it often defines itself by redefining existing concepts, which is something I’d forgotten along the way. It reframes what already exists as part of my identity - in this case, my trans malehood. My malehood is being reframed to fit a better model than “masculine”, “feminine”, and “neutral” - I’ve never felt like I fit any of these parameters no matter which direction my transgender experience was moving.

Part of the maverine experience is also disidentification (also known as the para-maverinities.) This means that even if something technically falls within a certain category, it doesn’t have to. It’s similar to my being a transgender man, but not transmasculine - I deny the technical category of transmasculine because it simply doesn’t fit me. Maverinity never has to fall under the outherine umbrella if the person using the label doesn’t view it in that way. Maverinity can and should be allowed to exist on its own in a way that doesn’t into all these different categories, because its autonomous nature is an important part of what defines it. Both disidentification and recontextualization are part of that autonomous experience.

Now, what I had failed to realize from the start was that on this list of outherinities that I was archiving, at the very bottom of the original post, maverinity is included. But, it’s included as something separate because while it can be outherine, it doesn’t have to be. Maverinity can be its own identity and just because there seems to be a place it might fit, some who use the label might find it more helpful to keep it out of all those categories and let it stand alone.

Maverinity, to me, is “other” but not “outher.” The only other way that I might describe it is aporine, which is something that I also view as “other” - in this context, I mean “other than the binary.” Because of this, otherness doesn’t feel so much like a category, and so it makes more sense to describe my gender and my transness as such - something other than the binary, something other than convention, something other than all these restrictive options I’ve been given. My transgender identity, tied to maverinity, carries the same kind of otherness that doesn’t fit in anywhere besides aporinity (and that’s only based on my personal view of what aporinity is - not a category, but a descriptor.)

My transness doesn’t feel like it needs a category. I can do what I want with it - whatever surgeries or hormones I want, whatever names I want to give it - but in the end, I define it in my own way rather than how other people expect me to define it. “Can’t be categorized” feels more fitting to me than “falls into a ton of these brand-new abinary categories.” I’m a transgender man, but that’s the gender that I am in the scope of transness - the quality of my transness doesn’t fall anywhere near the binary because of how autonomy pulls it far away from existing categories. Overall, I’m still nonbinary and I’m still a transgender man - those just happen to involve a lot of complex, interlocking layers that influence one another in very specific, maverine-leaning ways.