By Elly Mullins
Keeping Our Minds Flexible
I first met Gray when he was eight years old. He sat on the floor of his mother’s living room coloring a picture of a robot; he nervously looked away as I entered the room to join him, his mother, and the case manager who was facilitating our Match. I had signed up to be a Big Sister through a local chapter of the organization, I was interviewed and trained, and I was eager to start spending my weekends exploring the community while getting to know this shy and nervous child. I had visions of going to the beach, strolling through the woods, and baking cupcakes together one day. Gray didn’t say much except a whispered “hello” during that first meeting, but at the end, when his mother mentioned that he would be receiving his First Holy Communion the following week – and would I like to attend the ceremony? It felt like we were off to a good start.
The following weekend, I showed up to the church and sat in a pew at the rear of the nave. I watched as the children walked in procession down the aisle, hands pressed together in front of their chins, and received a blessing from the priest at the altar. Gray walked down the aisle frowning, his hair braided behind his head, and his body squeezed into a short-sleeved white dress, layers of crinoline filling out the skirt, his waist bound in a large bow. His family sat at the front of the church, taking pictures to commemorate this sacred occasion.
This was a ceremony I had participated in decades prior, and I remember how excited my family was for the event. Months before the ceremony, my mother dragged me to an outlet store on Central Avenue to pick out a dress and veil on our way home from school one afternoon. There were hundreds of white dresses, embroidered and sequined, squeezed together on the racks – and a wall of floral crowns with long flowing tulle draping below them. My mother searched through each aisle while I played with fistfuls of the crunchy fabric hidden beneath each skirt. Disinterested in shopping and eager to get home, I agreed to the first dress that fit.
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To see the look on Gray’s face, as I watched him walk down the aisle, I thought I could understand his torment. Like Gray, I felt uncomfortable and out of place when my mother forced me into dresses that just didn’t feel right to me. They itched, they squeezed, they billowed, and there was nothing I could do to convince my mother to let my body be. But unlike Gray, I wasn’t born into the wrong form; I wasn’t living in a world where people saw my body as one person while my hidden self was someone else entirely. His inner character and outer appearance were dangerously misaligned, and every day he was being required to accept this. To look back at the photo of me and Grey, both standing in dresses – mine loose and flowy, his lacy and full – I now understand the strained and hesitant smile on his eight-year-old face is like no pain I can relate to.
It was many years later that Gray shared with his family and with me that he was in the wrong body, and that he needed a change. He is almost an adult now, and the revelation of his true identity has been slow, and in stages. First Gray was bisexual, then lesbian, then non-binary, and now trans male. Some of the people in Gray’s life questioned the pace of this transition, wondering if Gray was simply confused, or perhaps experimenting. Many actively resisted the change and refused to use his new name and the pronouns he was now requesting. He pushed them away and only let those in who could see him as Gray.
Adjusting to pronouns is not easy. We learn to assign pronouns at a very young age, and in the English language and many Western cultures, gender is largely a binary construct. The shift of the word “they” from a plural pronoun to a singular was an uncomfortable shift for many people from all political and social perspectives. Unlearning those constructs can be confusing. It’s challenging. And something about it just doesn’t feel right sometimes – especially when you have known a person since they were a child, and your walls are filled with photos that contradict what you must believe. But yet, we can try if we want to show love and respect to the people in our communities who ask this of us because living life in the wrong body is far more confusing and more challenging, and I imagine that it almost never feels right. We do not have an obligation to the English language to maintain grammatical correctness, as some might suggest, but rather an obligation to our friends, loved ones, and strangers who have been asked to conform to a rigid notion of gender identity for the sake of appeasing others or fitting in.
As I reflect on the development of my friendship with Gray over the last nine years, it remains difficult at times to refrain from using his birth name and pronouns. Back then, Gray was a girl, a voice in my head points out. But when I think about my love for Gray, I know that it is okay for that voice to be wrong. The pronouns and the name – and even the clothing he wears – have changed, but Gray was always there, a shy and nervous boy, waiting to be unbound.
Photo by IIONA VIRGIN on Unsplash
1 Comment
Absolutely beautiful!