I'm Nonbinary

but I experienced life as a Woman

I’m nonbinary.

When I first came out and started to explore my gender, I was told all of the ways to neutralize my identity and all of my past experiences, because past Dani was always nonbinary Dani.

While that is true, that I was always nonbinary, and queer, and Dani, what this expectation didn’t quite grasp was the nuance that comes with growing up as a woman in our society. The more I started to strip away certain identities and neutralize them, so that I’d be in the middle like other nonbinary people and model good-neutral-language, the further I started to feel from myself.

Parent.
Sibling.
Child.

While all of these are true, they aren’t really the full story. They lack is the layer of experience that comes with certain roles that we play for others, and how many of those roles came without choice. They lack the history of all that I have carried and will continue to carry.

I will always be the eldest daughter.

Not just the oldest child, but the eldest daughter. This is a particular experience that is binary based, and sexist, and deeply known for those who hold the same title, especially for those who came from less-than-stable homes. The eldest daughter is expected to be a caretaker, a navigator. The responsible one. The mediator. The fixer. They’re resented in their roles when they’re in them, and resented when they leave.

I will always be a mother.

While I was mothering before I had my own child, I chose to have my child when I did. I carried my child. I birthed and breastfed my child. I have always been mom. This title never changed for me. Nothing else felt quite right, though I was asked again and again what new thing I’d like to be called. Not by my child, mind you, by others. My child, when I changed my name, simply asked, “can I still call you mom.” I said of course, because to us, that title was a bond and an experience, not a gendered, societal phrase.

I am a single mother.

Not just a single parent, because the experience of a single mother is, in most cases, different. A single mother carries the weight of judgement, even if folks don’t realize they’re casting it. We don’t often have help or community because we’re “so strong” that we don’t seem to need it, even when we desperately do. And hint: most of us desperately do. We’re often the primary parent, the one who is doing the raising, and taking care of school, and shopping, and going to doctors appointments. We’re often the ones doing the work of two, alone.

I was diagnosed ADD at 15.

I was diagnosed because my volleyball coach caught it. Not the teachers who called me lazy. Not the teachers who claimed I didn’t read things because I didn’t retain information easily. My volleyball coach, because I misheard practice times, realized I had some auditory processing issues.

ADD. Not ADHD, and even now that the two are combined, I was rebranded as the inattentive type. It’s not because I don’t have impulses of physical hyperactivity, because it turns out that I do, but because I spent my entire life being conditioned to not be too loud, too much, or to have any needs of my own. I was meant to be needed, not needy. However, the ability to sit painstakingly long without consequence is abruptly changing, which brings me to my next point:

I’m perimenopausal.

I’ll be 38 in a couple of weeks, and the early signs have been here, apparently, for some time. Menopause is something that all females experience at some point in their life, but it is under-researched, and under-taught, and many people around my age are getting hit in the face with it, instead of being well prepared for it. And before you say I’m too young, I’m not. Neurodivergent folks are just more likely to notice the subtle changes in their mid-to-late 30s.

I’m nonbinary, but my life experience is from the perspective of womanhood.

This, obviously, is not the case for every nonbinary person, but it is my experience. These things that I’m sitting with, these identities I’ve held, they’re mine.

My gender is who I am, but my experience is based on who society is.
Our society is sick, but it’s the one we live in.

I experience the world as a woman, because that is how the world experiences me. I’m done trying to neutralize and erase aspects of self that made me who I am today. I’m done trying to morph myself into someone who will never be misgendered (it doesn’t work) and I’m done trying to appease the pseudo-altruistic folks who encouraged me to do so.

I’m done trying to appease anyone other than myself, if I’m being honest.

I’m going to start using phrases that make sense for not just me, but for the society that we live in. I want to ask my friend’s for a “girls day,” because that’s a genderless term for day-drink-and-shop-and-gossip. I want to be able to say that I’m a mom, because that’s the relationship that I have with my child. I don’t want to neutralize every single term that comes out of my mouth because, in all honesty, I’m exhausted.

I’m done trying to educate and erase myself.
I’m done being some example.
I’m done listening to people who probably haven’t done the work to look at their own misogyny.

My gender is my inner world and my expression of self. It’s a blending of masculine and feminine that ebbs and flows like the tides of the sea. I hold both, and I love both, and that means no longer dismissing the woman side of me, even if it means people continue to misgender me.

I am mother, and the eldest daughter, and perimenopausal, and I’m still nonbinary.

In hope,
Mx. Dani
They/Them