Who I Am Amber Finefrock I Still Know You

Who I Am

By: Amber Finefrock

For much of my freshman year of high school I spent a lot of time trying to figure myself out. Middle school had been a hard time, full of calls of “dyke”, being shoved into lockers while walking down the hall, and having my feet swiped out from underneath me while walking down the stairs. The last year it got so bad that I stopped wanting to go to school at all.

Over the course of a summer holed up in my bedroom, I learned to live with a mentality of steel and a tunnel vision view of my life. I knew who I was, even though I wasn’t really there yet or just wouldn’t admit it.

Things started out small. I had told myself not to let others’ words get through, but even then it seemed my own thoughts found a way to torture me. Every day I would look in the mirror and wonder, “what is femininity, and why don’t I feel it?”

FEMININE \’fe-me-nine’\ adj: of, relating to, or constituting the gender that includes most words or grammatical forms referring to females.

How could that be right? What made me feminine? I hated the way my voice sounded and the way my body was shaped. Long hair didn’t feel right and the idea that boys would look at me for those things felt wrong, scary almost.

So I began to change.

I cut almost all of my hair off so it was only about an inch off of my head. The “dyke” insult came back but I couldn’t bring myself to care, I felt better than I had in a long time.

Loss of my hair was followed by a change in wardrobe, dresses and skirts were traded out for jeans, button-ups, and simple tshirts. I still liked the girly things but I felt a statement had to be made. People stopped insulting and had started asking questions instead.

“Your name is what?”

“What’s with the sudden change?”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

That last one had me stumped, I should have had an answer. At least, I thought I should have. All I had ever known was that there had to be “boys” or “girls” and that your sex should have been your gender. That’s what society tells us as young kids.

Research had to be done, there had to be something that made sense, something I identified with. Because I felt so lost when some days I woke up wishing I was more masculine, and others I found myself embracing my femininity.

I had discovered this concept named the “gender-spectrum”, an idea that explains gender as something more than “A” or “B”. We were always taught our sex was our gender and boys had to act like this while 28 TheF.cho

girls acted like this. Aside from this norm you were a tomgirl or tomboy, no one was taught why some kids didn’t feel comfortable in their own skin other than “it’s just a phase”, and were told “you’ll get over it”. My place on this spectrum is peculiar, a place between the two sides in empty space.

It was a great day when I bought my first chest binder, and it was a reminder to myself that I had made how I “I felt better a choice on could present stood than I had in myself. I in front the mirror lookmyself all day, ing over and admira long time”_J ing the fact that if I wanted to be more masculine, I could do it. There was nothing stopping me from looking the way I wanted to look.

It was a great day when I realized I was gender-fluid, this middle ground for gender that explains these feelings, slipping between male, female, or neither. I was no longer at war with myself. I found a way to explain it to others. What I didn’t take into Fall2014 29