CHAMELEON GIRL

Let's face it, being young isn't an easy experience for anyone! However, there's definitely certain experiences, lifestyles & choices our parents can make for us that can make it even more difficult, but as they say, we are forged in the fire and adversity can give us more depth of character.

I vividly recall one time around 2nd grade coming home crying because some kids at my new school called me "weird." I didn't know why that hurt me so much at the time, but it was used as a rebuke and it stung my fragile little ego at the time. Mom simply looked at me, tears streaming down my face, and with a puzzled look asked me, quite frankly, "would you rather the kids call you normal?" With a sniffle, and a tear wiped from my eyes, feeling rather foolish, I responded with "I guess not." Normal was never something I, nor anyone in my family, had really ever strived for. We were all a bit odd in our own ways and I was just getting to the age of either embracing that fact or choosing to compromise myself just to "fit in." I didn't really think the latter could ever be an option for me though. I didn't have it in me to make "compromises" for my personality, opinions, likes or dislikes and in that way, very little has changed over the past 33 years since.

I had just moved to Washington state at the age of 7 from my tropical oasis in Hawaii. I was not happy about this AT ALL. In fact I was devastated!! We had a pool in Hawaii, fruit trees, and a nice cul-de-sac by the marina. In my eyes, to this day, Hawaii was paradise and now I was in this cold, rainy, miserable place living with an ill-tempered Nana who needed full time care after a quadruple bypass surgery and diagnosis with Alzheimer's Disease. By that time I'd already moved from Laguna Beach, California to Morrison, Colorado, spent a little time in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida then moved to Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii now Kent, Washington. We weren't done moving yet either! In fact, from Kent we moved to Auburn then Enumclaw, Washington, where we ended up staying until I reached my freshman year in high school. Then, in the middle of my freshman year my Dad took a job offer back in Boulder, Colorado so we moved to Longmont, CO then back to the mountains of Conifer, CO.

We had hoped to stick around Conifer for the rest of high school, but fate had different plans for us when my father suddenly and unexpectedly died right after my 16th birthday. Without a place to live or anything anchoring us to Colorado, my mom sent us to live temporarily with cousins in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, a fun and unique experience that convinced me one day I needed to live abroad as an expat, but that hasn't happened yet!

Mom found us another temporary place to stay by staying in a single room of our old house (which had renters) in Enumclaw until she could pull her resources together to get us a more permanent home near a major airport. I should mention that my mother was a Continental flight attendant for over 30 years and we usually made an effort to live near a major hub especially now that she'd be traveling for work a widowed single mother of two teenage girls. We ultimately ended up living in The Woodlands, Texas by the end of my junior year where I graduated high school in 1999. I then moved to Orange, California to attend Chapman University on a full scholarship and except for one mistake of moving to Virginia Beach, VA for a relationship, I have remained living in Southern California, predominantly in Oceanside, CA since the year 2005.

So all in all I attended 12 different schools during my K-12 educational years. That's a lot of moving and change especially for a weird kid. Also, I was adopted at age 5 and I was going through a little more than your average emotional problems as a kid dealing with early trauma, but certain personality traits are just innate and fortunately I was always a "social butterfly" even if I was never popular or well liked by other kids. In fact, I usually preferred to socialize with my teachers.

I'd like to paint a picture of the kid I was, whom, by the way at that time went by the name of Sarah. Sarah wore thick glasses & was a chubby girl (still extra fluffy today as an adult by the name of Celeste btw!). Sarah was an intellectual snob who reveled in reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, Webster's Dictionary & Thesaurus as well as the SAT Practice books and the National College Recommended Reading List. None of this was winning me any social brownie points. I won spelling bees and wouldn't settle for anything less than an A+ or over 90% on any of my homework. I was neurotic about this. I was obsessed with the idea of attending college and wrote to all the colleges and universities starting in 6th grade requesting course catalogues which I collected and filed in my file cabinet. Some kids got excited about Nintendo & going to the mall and I got excited to get the mail with these huge books and information on universities around the world.

Generally, I didn't know how to connect socially with my peers at school. I didn't know anything at all about pop culture, main stream contemporary music, name brand clothing, or boys. I did have a unique sense of style that was hard to pin down into a subculture and often gave an impression that I was perhaps not as straight laced & vanilla as I really was (ie goth, hippie, gypsy, bohemian, witch, grunge). Nothing could be worse than being mislabeled as a "jock" or "prep" in my opinion at that time.

I had spent a big portion of my childhood in Enumclaw, Washington when I arrived at the end of 3rd grade and didn't move out of that town until my freshman year. During that time I had really acquired a reputation as a socially inept dork nobody wanted to hang out with. I had traveled the world with my Mom, which is unusual for a kid in a small rural town. I had a really dark sense of humor and conversation rooted in existential dread and an endless search for meaning in this cruel and hostile world of evil humans. Ultimately, I had a lot of emotional and mental stuff I had to work through on my own.

Now, my Mom. Don't get it twisted, this is the Mom that raised me not birthed me, but she's the only Mother I acknowledge because she stepped into that role when I was age 2 all the way until I was 18 & for that there is respect, even if it was less than ideal. Let's talk about this woman because she really made life both equally miserable and interesting, and contributed greatly to the person I ultimately became. Our home lives revolved around the unique and fascinating, complex person that was my Mom. She was such a secretive person even those closest to her say they hardly knew her at all after she died in 2008. My Mom was a petite woman who dressed mostly in men's clothes, she was a bipolar, animal hoarding, chain smoking, Coca-Cola Classic obsessed, Rx addicted, masculine presenting, opinionated, controlling af, paranoid af, woman with a dirty dirty mouth, very possibly closeted bi or lesbian, with an eating disorder (caused my rigid weight rules imposed by the airlines in the 60's and 70's) and a big martyr complex. She wanted to save everybody including us adopted kids, but she wanted you to remember all she sacrificed and all she regretted and blamed us as the cause of her suffering. Yes, there was a lot of emotional, psychological, verbal and even some mild physical abuse that took place in our home and that also hindered me in being able to find and express myself fully.

On the bright side, our Mom also took my sister and I on adventures around the world through her job, told both of us we could be or do anything we set our minds to in the world, and was a feminist who believed in equality for all races and people. She prayed for world peace even if, ironically, peace at home was never an option.

My Mom and I really never understood or connected with one another. Even with straight A's, an immaculately clean room, cooking & cleaning for the family while she was away on work, and having no friends or social life, I was a never ending disappointment and the cause of all our family's turmoil somehow. She often told me how much she couldn't understand why I wanted to wear dresses or be girly, body shamed me and said I was a social butterfly like it was a bad thing! In fact, when I left for college she never wanted anything to do with me and despite multiple attempts to connect with her we were ultimately estranged. I never saw her again after I graduated high school and left for college and she died in 2008.

One of the "biggest" issues that was repeatedly a problem socially and at home was my weight. To be blunt, I was THE fat kid, not just one of many, but the biggest one and also the tallest girl outside the basketball team at 5'10. I had emotional problems and snuck food, but never ate in front of other kids, starving myself quite frequently through the school day then binging on quesadillas the moment I got home. I was never really into sports, but I enjoyed swimming and volleyball. I'm just not a competitive person. Since I was ridiculed constantly at home and at school I became very shut down, depressed and went inward as a chronic overthinker. I'd walk about the school shoulders slumped, clothes oversized & dark because as Mom would say, "black is slimming." My gaze would be turned to the floor avoiding eye contact because I might catch the attention of one of the bullies, yet I desperately wanting to connect with others.

So, now that I've painted this picture for you, let's get back to the "not fitting in." It was rough, but by high school since we were moving pretty much every semester so that gave me this rare opportunity to keep trying on different personas & styles as I would reinvent myself with each relocation. Also, in junior high I had discovered what would turn out to be my "saving grace" for the rest of my life, and that was my singing voice. Even the bullies would respect if they heard me sing. Choir was the only class where I was never bothered and I could lift my chin and gaze to meet the eyes of my classmates. I felt a sense of purpose and I LOVED the spotlight as a soloist. I took every opportunity to perform solo. I also loved wearing beautiful gowns and dresses. Mom wasn't a fan of dresses and they were really hard to find in my sizes. I'd usually end up in a frumpy floral chiffon mid-calf length dress from The Dress Barn or some other store for middle-aged women. I wasn't cool, but I felt feminine and that was yet another thing Mom didn't understand. I wasn't happy in pants and I'm still not! (Some things never change!)

While growing up in Enumclaw I was this blend of a dorky hippie grunge girl that wore skater & band t-shirts over thermals with men's pants & long hippie skirts from the thrift store with chain wallets, a military issue green jacket and military boots from the surplus store & thick black framed glasses (imagine a chunky version of Daria) since I couldn't afford real Doc Martens or I wore my Birkenstocks mom bought me. I had one pair of dress shoes for choir concerts in black patent leather. It was hard to find shoes outside of Payless for my big ole 10 wide feet.

When we relocated to Longmont, CO, within weeks the entire school referred to me as "Seattle" even though nobody knew where I had moved from. Yes, I was THAT grunge...keeping in mind this was circa 1994-1995. I actually didn't mind being called Seattle. The moniker had nothing to do with my weight and it wasn't an insult, but I didn't want to dress grunge every day and technically I wasn't even from Seattle, just the same county. Later that year we moved to Conifer, CO for a brand new high school that was in its' inaugural year so technically EVERYBODY was a new kid. There were no previously established social hierarchies or groups. It was a fresh start for all of us and I was entering my full on goth phase. I gave kids nightmares apparently and in a way I found that empowering. Suddenly I was able to look up and it was the other kids averting their eyes - for no reason other than they assumed I was in cahoots with Satan or his demon pals. It was better to be feared than be bullied in my opinion. I reveled in the power although some taunting still remained; at least it wasn't about my weight or appearance. Ultimately, being feared left me just as isolated and alone as being bullied.

When we relocated to Texas, I found myself in the middle of the conservative Bible belt where grunge apparel was banned including chain wallets and dog collars, much to my dismay. All black apparel was also not approved school attire so I reverted back to my hippie persona at this time. I rejected shoes, wore flowers in my hair, lived in long flowy dresses. I was a singer and an honor student and nobody bothered me for the most part.

The new big teen angst issue I was dealing with now was I found myself living in a closet I hadn't even been aware of! For years, I was not into boys like the other girls. If one of the girls asked me to point out the boys I thought were cute, it was always the long haired poet hippie guys. The girls would cringe and say "he looks like a girl!" I guess I should have realized sooner, but it was a different time totally unlike today. We didn't have people talking about gay folks on television or in the media unless it was a very bad scandal or someone losing their career. We had no real gay icons and it was still perfectly normal for people to call things gay that were stupid. There was no reference. I had never met or known a gay person in my family or otherwise. I didn't feel like I had a context for what this even meant in the big picture of my life. I had heard terrible things about being gay in some churches though. I knew it was viewed as a sin, but I also knew that I had never really been attracted to boys at all, nor did I ever want to have children or pictured myself in a relationship or getting married to a boy, but I wasn't ready to say I was gay or lesbian or put a label on it. I had started my first long distance online relationship with a female. I knew if the truth got out it would only further alienate me socially and I wasn't ready to deal with Bible-Thumpers coming to save my soul. Instead, I became extremely involved in as many churches as possible in that area. I was attending 7 church youth groups and had made a new best friend who was a Vietnamese punk androgynous girl who took me to her Buddhist Temple also. She had purple hair and purple contacts and wore dog collars, played the upright bass classically and electric bass for her heavy metal band, but she wasn't into drugs or sex or breaking the rules. She was a good girl that looked edgy and we connected through music and mutual acceptance. We're still good friends to this day and we've always accepted one another exactly as we are even when I came out of the closet to her that senior year.

Throughout all those years, teachers, adults, outsiders saw how I struggled and failed to really fit in with people my age, and multiple adults told me not to worry because I was the kind of kid who would thrive in the adult world and in college and they were absolutely correct! Despite my struggles, I really came running out of that closet and really discovered myself the minute I became independent from my family and could really explore my individuality in California. I only got more feminine with more dresses and MUCH more makeup as I grew older and became more fully involved in the queer community as I embraced myself as an out lesbian. My friends were usually flamboyant gay men or artistic women who made me feel confident, sexy, bold and beautiful at any size in any crazy outfit I managed to put together. Quite often, I even wore lingerie & thigh highs with garters to many a night at the Rocky Horror Picture Show or a gay night club in West Hollywood. Things I never in a million years thought I'd have the confidence to wear. I AM glamourous. I LOVE sparkles, dresses, wigs, long pointy manicures, bold lip shades, huge hair flowers and head accessories & a lot of bling and jewelry.

Now, at age 40, since I was 30 years old, I have enjoyed a solo career as a performing vocalist at every venue from senior living communities, to Pride Festivals to resorts, and upscale parties and venues. I spent over a decade as a pin-up & rockabilly girl going to car shows & festivals as well as doing pin-up for charity where I found a very body positive group of feminine, mostly cis gendered heterosexual women who fully accepted and embraced both me and my masculine presenting wife into their community.

Now, I do wear dresses 99.99% of the time, from elegant gowns to casual looks to pin-up styles, to costumes, to glamorous and elegant styles. I try on every look and this is a big part of who I have become in my life. In fact, it has helped me really truly love and appreciate myself to the fullest. Getting myself ready in the morning is my "creative" part of my day where I get to start with the blank canvas that is me and deliberately and carefully choose every single thing I put on my body from head to toe. It is my craft and the way I express myself and one of the best parts is that my style makes so many other people happy!! Whether I am performing, or at the grocery store or running some errands, everywhere I go, strangers, particularly women & children compliment my style and tell me they are inspired by my confidence and style. How amazing is it to inspire people simply by living as yourself unhindered?

What I have found is that ultimately, through all those experiences, constantly relocating through my childhood, extensive worldwide travel, and from my career as a performer I am able to move effortlessly through various social groups and find love and acceptance from a huge variety of extremely conservative to extremely liberal groups. The diversity of people that have come into my world is staggering criss-crossing every ethnicity, socio-economic class, age group, gender, sexual preference, religion, & culture. This is why I tend to think of myself as a Chameleon Girl. I wear different wigs/hair colors ever day and modify my style to perfectly fit each event, occasion or gig and I'm never not standing in my truth or being phony because every look, every style, everything is 100% authentically me. I love being me so much because I so clearly remember when I didn't know who I was and I was scared to reveal whoever I was out of fear of judgment and reproach.

If I could give any young person a word of advice, it would be just to be completely themselves, unapologetically...and NOT by being a jerk or rude, but by living authentically with a sense of love, compassion and understanding that we are all different and that's exactly what makes us so amazing and interesting. At first, your peers & family may not understand it, but over time there will be those drawn to you like a moth to a flame and by the time you are an adult you will truly shine bright and people will love you even if they don't understand you. If we lose that sense of individuality, that sense of who we are and what we really like, letting the outside world dictate to us our preferences, we'll always have a sense of being phony or an "imposter," rather, the world is so much more colorful with the real YOU in it. In retrospect, I'm so grateful I was a weird kid.