“I… think I’m nonbinary.”
It’s the third time I’ve ever said it out loud. The first two times were in the bathroom mirror the week before.
The word sounds foreign; I struggle to get my mouth to form the syllables. When I hear the word, it sounds like someone else is saying it, like I’m just in the room hearing it. I feel far away from my body; my mind is not in the bed that we’re laying in.
Maybe this was all a mistake. Maybe I should’ve never brought any of this up.
I can’t see her reaction. The lights are off and I’m facing the back of her head, laying on the pillow.
“Okay? That’s okay. It doesn’t change anything.”
I use the arm that’s wrapped around her waist to pull myself closer. My heart is still racing; I don’t know how to follow up what I just said.
It’s been seven years since we first met; we’ve been married for four of those. Seven years that she’s known me as a man, that she thought we were in a straight relationship.
I don’t know how to do this. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.
“Do you want to be called different pronouns?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Like what?”
“I think they/them.”
This is it, I think. This is the part where she realizes it’s all going to be too complicated, that I’m going to have to come out to people we know and some of them won’t understand and it’ll all be awkward.
This is the part where she tries to dissuade me or maybe just finally decides it’s not worth it.
“Okay. Is this why you were being so weird tonight?”
“Yeah. I was just…scared. Scared that you wouldn’t like me anymore once I told you.”
“What?”
She turns to face toward me.
“Of course I still like you. This doesn’t change anything between us.”
A Year Ago
“This is a song about gender dysphoria, before I knew what the feeling was called. This song is very personal, and I only play it for audiences I really have a connection with.”
I’m standing in the crowd at a dingy Brooklyn concert venue, looking up at the lead singer of the band Pinkshift. Sweat rolls down my nose and drips to the floor, the air heavy with the smell of 150 punks who have been moshing in a crowded venue with no air conditioning mixed with the smell of fruity vapes and cheap beer.
For this song, everyone stands still. The lead singer brings out an electric keyboard; no bass, guitar, or drums are needed for this song.
I’ve heard the song dozens of times before, but for the first time, it clicks. Suddenly, I’m the only one in the crowd. I don’t feel the shoulders bumping up against mine; I don’t see the heads that are obstructing my view of the stage.
It finally all makes sense.
I have gender dysphoria.
The lead singer of the opening band had remarked earlier that night that concerts often feel like spiritual experiences. I had been to numerous concerts before, but would never quite go that far to describe the experience. At best, they were ways to let off some steam, to dance and sing and let go of some stress.
Until tonight.
The song finishes and venue staff comes to rush the keyboard off the stage. The drums and guitar kick back in and the crowd is once again jumping. I’m right along with them, but I can feel, deep down, that something has irreversibly changed.
After the show, I leave the venue the same way I came in — alone. My wife doesn’t like loud noises, or rock music, or crowds, so I never drag her to shows with me.
But for the first time, I don’t leave lonely. There are other people out there who have felt what I have. There are people out there like me.
Maybe I don’t have to be so ashamed of this, bury it so deep.
Dysphoria.
The word keeps replaying in my mind throughout the late drive back to New Jersey.
***
Over the next several days, moments I’ve long forgotten about pop back into my mind. Like the time I cut my hair that I had been growing out for two years. I just didn’t like how scraggly it looked, I told myself at the time. Plus, it got too hot in the summer.
But deep down, I knew the reason: it didn’t feel soft enough, didn’t look feminine enough. It made me feel like more of a man instead of less of one.
Dysphoria.
Or the time I trimmed all of my chest hair because it felt too thick, I told myself.
Dysphoria.
The time I asked to put eyeliner on at Halloween just to make the costume more realistic. The time I downloaded a face morphing app just to see what I’d look like as a girl. The time I bought a Young Adult book starring a queer main character, despite being well beyond the target age range, just to “broaden my literary horizons.”
Dysphoria, dysphoria, dysphoria.
25 Years Old
“Can I try painting my nails sometime?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know, I’ve just seen some guys online do it and I thought it might be fun.”
She heads upstairs to pull out the plastic bin with her nail polishes.
This is a stupid idea. People are going to make fun of you.
She brings the bin back down and pops off the lid.
“What color?”
I rifle through the polishes, pulling each out slightly to look at the color. Mostly pinks, with a few other neutral colors mixed in.
“Black."
It feels safe. It’s what I’ve seen other guys wear. Other people will just think I’m edgy. Maybe they won’t make fun of me for it.
She’s doing her nails at the same time, so she picks out her color to demonstrate. She unscrews the cap, shows me how to scrape off some of the polish so it doesn’t drip, and then begins painting it on.
I follow her lead, unscrewing the cap and pulling out the brush with my right hand. I start to apply it and immediately trace a line on the skin to the side of my nail even as I’m trying to keep all of the polish on the nail. She laughs under her breath and then guides my hand.
After the first nail or two, it gets easier. I think I’ve got the hang of this, in fact, until it’s time to hold the brush with my left hand.
I contort my hand to try to find what feels natural, but none of it does. This is going to be an acquired skill.
The second hand is much worse than the first. Spots of black line the skin around the nails, but it’s done.
It looks strange. This isn’t my body as I’ve ever known it, and I had no way to expect what jet black would look like on my fingertips.
But I like it.
When I’m at the grocery store for the first time after painting my nails, I ball my hands into fists and tuck my thumbs so no one can see. But eventually I have to pull out my credit card and they’re there, in full display.
The cashier doesn’t say anything.
In that moment, the realization hits me - I can change. And people won’t care. Maybe I don’t have to uphold the image I’ve created for 25 years. Maybe I don’t have to try to be the person that everyone likes all the time.
After that first interaction, it gets easier and I get bolder. I paint my ring finger pink while keeping the rest black. I paint my nails before seeing friends or family. And I all I hear are the occasional “I like your nails!”
It’s almost like my nails give me courage. Having a physical manifestation of just a little bit of self-confidence starts to ease open all the doors I’ve put up around so much.
21 Years Old
“What The Bible Teaches About Homosexuality.”
It’s about as straightforward as you can get for a book title.
That’s the name that’s written on the pocket-sized book that the leader of our Christian group has just put down in front of each leader. He tells us to read it, that its views align with our group’s official views.
As if one person’s interpretation of a few ambiguous verses is somehow supposed to be what we all hold true.
I don’t say anything at that moment. I slide the book into my backpack, leaving the meeting with everyone else.
When I get back to my apartment, I take a quick skim, confirming what I already suspected: “love the sinner, hate the sin” is essentially the conclusion, the same conclusion I’ve heard over and over at large group and winter conference and leadership retreat and discipleship.
I list it on my eBay seller account where I make a few bucks on the side reselling old media. A few weeks later, I get the email that it has sold for eight bucks.
Probably the best thing that could’ve come out of that book, I think to myself.
A few weeks prior, that same leader sat down with several members of our group attending a church that leaned liberal. The church leaders didn’t have a stance on whether being gay was a sin; a handful of staff members and plenty of people in the congregation were LGBTQ+, and the church was known to be accepting and open.
That church was the closest example I had seen to the Jesus in the Bible. The Jesus who didn’t shame or discriminate or cast judgement.
And the leader of the campus Christian group discouraged us from attending.
He said the group’s official views would never align with the church. That we could keep going, but we couldn’t advertise where we went to church to incoming members of the group.
Everyone from our group stopped attending the church, except my wife and I.
That split in values was also one of the first cracks in my own worldview.
Later that semester, one of my disciples asks in small group, “I have a gay friend getting married, and I’m invited. Should I go?”
“You should definitely go and show them that you love them, even if you disagree,” I reply.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
16 Years Old
“So what kind of music do you listen to?”
Unlike a public school class, the world of homeschooling has a lot of turnover. I have a few close friends that I met years ago, but the rest of my interactions depend on who finds the online homeschool communities my mom is part of, when parents decide to pull their kids out of public school (or send them back), and who knows who.
That’s why, at most events I go to, I know only a handful of people there. The rest of the time, I find myself trading introductory questions with someone I’ve just met for the first time.
Questions like “what kind of music do you listen to?”.
I give my usual list: some Switchfoot, Lecrae, Toby Mac, my parents really like the Beach Boys…
Somehow, I’ve attached an implicit feeling of shame to the music I actually listen to. Avril Lavigne, Paramore, some k-pop, this Japanese girly rock band called Scandal. Scandal’s new album Queens Are Trumps was on repeat. I regularly dreamed of meeting Hayley Williams (or did I just want to be her?).
I had learned by this point that if I talked about these artists, about the music I really listen to, I’d get made fun of. So I chose the safe answer - contemporary Christian or Christian-adjacent artists. I’d cruise through this conversation, staying somewhat relatable, until that day - whenever it was - that I could finally be my real safe. That I could be true to what I actually liked and who I actually was.
Until then, though, I’ll keep playing it safe.
10 Years Old
It’s our family’s annual trip to Disney, but this time, I’ve chosen to grace every family photo with a red bandana and flashy skull jewelry. Pirates of the Caribbean is my current obsession, and I refuse to take off my costume.
My parents are used to it, though. “I painted your toenails when you asked me to,” my mom reminds me occasionally. Growing up, I’d often wear clip-on earrings, and opted for My Little Pony toys.
Back then, with my parents embracing my interests and being homeschooled, I didn’t know that I was different.
The world hadn’t taught me that yet.
————————————-
Coming out as non-binary in my mid-20s has been a whirlwind. I always thought queer people just knew – knew who they liked, or that they were transgender, from a young age.
So when I started to have these feelings in my 20s – wanting to paint my nails or dress more feminine – I just assumed I was a man who was a little bit weird. I didn’t consider otherwise until my dysphoria, my discomfort with being seen as a man, got so loud that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Since coming out a few months ago, on the surface, not much has changed – I still dress masc most days, and most people I meet use male pronouns. Yet at the same time, everything has changed.
All of those small memories, the vague sense of “wrongness” I’ve felt, finally made sense. It’s like connecting the pieces of a puzzle, except I couldn’t see that pieces were missing.
Some days, I still feel dysphoria when picking clothes. Some days, it feels like not a single item in my closet will fit me right. And yet, unlike before, I now know why.
I finally see myself – my true self, not the version the world wanted me to be, not the version shrouded by a shame I didn’t realize I was carrying. And because of that, I can make the small decisions to honor my feelings. To wear the clothes that give me euphoria (or, at least, minimal dysphoria). To wear more jewelry and grow my hair out. To tell strangers I’m meeting for the first time that my pronouns are they/them.
For the first time in years, when I look in the mirror, I see me.
