Clownfish
(Listen while reading: music for indigo — Adrianne Lenker)
Gender and sexuality is a joke. It’s cruel, and utter nonsense — a way to squeeze more money out of our pockets and more hatred into our heads. In the least delicate of words, it’s essentially a scam that looks small enough to be swept under the rug.
Blankets engulf me, and the subtle light from the screen of my phone is gentle to anyone who’d see, but blinding to my own eyes. The farmer in the video shows the audience a deer — or, what became a deer, and the cogs in my head begin to turn. Nobody cares about same-sex swan couples or transgender deer, because it’s “a miracle”, or “unique”, or “extraordinary”; but the second it’s a person, it’s “gross”, “unnatural”, and “repulsive”. People tend to act like we are above it all — like we ourselves aren’t animals. Here is the truth: we are one and the same. Messy, carnal, and full of life that itches and crawls under our skin. Humanity is flawed and imperfect, unlike the boxes we label “girl” and “boy” before choosing one to force ourselves into.
“Gender” is a funny word, and it’s one I never truly grasped — even now, I think it’s a concept near-impossible for anyone to understand. If we’re happy with how we look, and how we present, isn’t that all that matters? More videos of animals popped up, and I found myself thinking even more. Lionesses grow manes. Does grow antlers. Clownfish change genders. By that standard, what makes the existence of changing humans so different? If the human person is constantly changing; if the one thing humanity will always do is change, why is the same principle not applied to one’s gender? The glowing screen I held in my hands felt like my own little sun, radiating a familiar light I know I’ve seen before.
I stood in the middle of the great divide, like always. Women — like a scurry of squirrels, to my left. Men — like a cackle of hyenas, to my right. There was melodic laughter, technical discussion, and vibrant tunes all at once, but it was like I was the only person who heard it as a whole. Life felt like I was always on the outside looking in. Like I was some wild animal, sitting out in the snow and ice, nearly freezing to death waiting for someone to let me in; or like I was a lone wolf, the runt of the litter, left out in a famine, looking at the rest of the pack feast on food not made for me. I struggled to understand the point — nobody should be forced to be anything they don’t want to be. I liked the great divide. If I couldn’t be part of just one side, then it was the divide that allowed me to be in both; to listen to each part of a beautiful song.
My friends grew up, as anyone does. I came to this while sitting in the same spot we always did, eating the same food we always bought. This time, the meal tasted dry in my mouth, and the milk wasn’t as sweet. It left an almost foul taste, and an unpleasant texture like sand in your throat when words would get stuck. People change. That is the one thing that I had learned to be constant — but I didn’t think it would happen to the people around me, who liked being in the great divide, too. They had changed, and so had I, but my own change was nothing like theirs. It struck my tongue; that metallic taste. I was the only bird left in the nest.
It smelled of wet grass and petrichor when I walked on the concrete roads after the rain to my favorite meadow. I knew it would be easier to change the same way my peers did, to pick a side; a cardboard box to stay cramped in. It’d be easier to open up a can of paint, breathe in the fumes, and paint a solid color over the worn gradients I bore on my soul. White on the black of my wool. Pick one and be done with it. I took a deep breath, one with the world around me, and I knew I couldn’t do it. How could anyone pick a singular flower to smell, when there were so many?
It’s suffocating to live as one thing, knowing I am another — or that I am neither, or that I am all of them at once. It’s overwhelming to realize that I change, and that I will keep changing until all I can do is freeze up and watch it happen in front of me. It’s terrifying to realize that if I don’t do anything, I’ll lose myself trying to swallow all the words to keep it in until there’s only lungs and a pair of eyes left; when all I am doing is surviving.
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Blades of grass grazed against my legs. My own realization stared back at me, and the wind blew behind me like the universe was trying to push me towards it. There, in the field I went to every time I felt lost, everything I had ever known looked me in the eye. The familiar blinding light, the song made of different voices, the bitter taste on my tongue, the smell of petrichor, the suffocation — all of it hit, and I crumbled to the ground with my hands in the dirt in a grim triumph.
I will always be this way. I will never change the same way anyone else does, and neither will the next person, nor the next. Change is constant, and it is unique to each person that undergoes it. I do not need to pick a side. I do not need to pretend I am like everyone around me, and repent when I remember that I am not. I do not need to have it all figured out — nobody ever really does. Change is just as permanent as bewilderment. Even the day must turn into night, the chorus into the bridge, the sweet into sour, and the rain into sun. I can exist as I am, on the great divide, as a black sheep, or the runt of the litter, or a clownfish; and maybe one day, when people are less afraid of who they are, they’ll join me, and I’ll stop feeling so alone.
To every kid, queer or not, figuring themselves out and struggling with the shame that comes with bravery, I say to you: wear that dress. Strut that suit. Dance and sing in the rain wearing a pride flag as a cape. Do every ridiculous thing you can think of, and see the eyes around you as the audience instead of the judges. Let your body be a reflection of your soul, because that is what it was always meant to be. You are not imprisoned in flesh; you were given a canvas with which you are to create.
