Afraid of Myself: a non-binary life

My days as a writer began when I couldn’t put the thought in my head into words that made sense. I would always write in journals or diaries, questioning everything. Who I was, what I was... but I never could never really get myself to read what I was writing and think about what I was thinking about. I was afraid. I still am.

It’s okay to fear yourself. You are nothing but another human trying to figure out the world and trying to stay alive. I didn’t value my life as much. I still don’t. It’s still hard for me to get up in the morning and want to be present in this society. I’d rather be in a dream, in another dimension. Anywhere else but here. This universe is so big yet so small.

We tend to see people we’ve never interacted with more than we’ve seen our own family. It just ends up thay how I can’t understand why. But what I live about how small it is because I get to talk to ones I never thought I’d really be talking to. I never write about the people I’ve met unless there was a strong connection between me and that person.

I don’t really like to let people in. When it’s hard for me to talk to me, it makes it harder me for to interact with people socially. I try as much as I can to stay alert but I never seem to be able to. At the same time I’m anxious about every little thing being perfect even thought deep down I’m probably thinking, “why did I do this I should’ve never made plans”.

I stopped writing for a long time because I felt I was never good enough for it and I moved onto the next idea in my head. Photography was another was for me to tell a story without the words. It was much easier for me to talk about my photos than it was for me to talk about my writing. My feelings also never really got on the paper and i always felt never good for anything thay I did and I felt like giving up on it all.

From the young age of 10, having a Hannah Montana birthday party and a diary that wrote about things that I did day to day and how I felt about some people, grew much different at the age of 13. At 13 years old I started seeing images of myself appear whenever they could to force me into hurting myself. I was having very bad thoughts I’m my head and I had one journal that I actually wrote down how I felt about the blood.

When I wanted to write about how I felt after cutting myself, the relief, it kind of scared me. What was writing reallt about? What is it for? What was I doing it for? Can someone write a lie? Can I be lying to myself? Is this a lie? What is good and what is bad?

Photography showed me that what’s in front of me is what’s true. And whatever you see can be the part of the story because stories aren’t black and white and neither are photos. After picking up a camera I never wrote again and I decided that I didn’t appreciate it anymore because I was too anxious about the future of my words. I knew they had no meaning and I knew they had no future because I was indeed failing at it. Photography was very complex and I was scared I could make a mistake and it wouldn’t do me any good. But as I learnt more my art got better.

Everything in life can get better. Even depression even anxiety. Even the hate you feel inside for yourself because you feel you aren’t good enough.

It’s so hard to have lived your whole life in a binary and then try to get out of it and be yourself. But it takes time just like everything else. My gender identity has never been the same; it has always been different. I am not the same as anyone else.

No one is.