Life is not a tidy story. There is no clear throughline, no narratively tight plot, and we can be heroes and villains and bystanders at any given time. But the desire to give coherence to our lives, to pull meaning and understanding from the tangle of events and people that define us, is a deeply human one. I love a memoir, an autobiography, as much as the next person.

It’s not a bad thing, this habit, so long as we’re careful not to get so far into our own navels that we can’t get out. As I sit down to write this piece for Our Lives, then, I’m keenly aware that I’m about to attempt this very thing—to turn (some) of my own life story into a tidy narrative. Because I want, like any of us, to be understood. And because I’m incredibly privileged to have this platform.

I worked as the Editor of Our Lives from 2012 to 2019, and during that time I had the pleasure of helping dozens of people put some of their own stories onto the page. Sometimes I just provided structure and input for someone who wrote the piece themselves, and other times I did interviews that I turned into profiles. I got to meet a wide and truly wonderful array of people that I might never have met otherwise. It popped my little queer bubble to reveal the far more diverse and far-reaching LGBTQ+ community that exists in Wisconsin and beyond. I learned so much, including more and more about how I wanted to show up in the world.

It’s been five years since I stepped down from my position at Our Lives to pursue different career opportunities. I offer this piece as a show of gratitude for everyone who has shared their stories with me and with Our Lives over the years. I am who I am today because of the people and the communities who’ve loved me and welcomed me in. Because while my individual life is just a collection of sometimes messy anecdotes, we all plug into a bigger story that gives shape to our history, present, and future. We are all (ideally) held by and beloved parts of a larger community.

Came out fighting 

When I step back and look at my life now, there’s a lot that would truly blow the mind of my child self: to be out and proud as a trans/genderqueer, bisexual, polyamorous person, to be making music with people I love, to participate in a sport I love, to do a job that feels meaningful, to have a wonderful chosen family, to care for two adorable dogs and multiple partners and to have a comfortable home of my own.

Not to say there aren’t plenty of hard times and challenges (I wish!), but I am, in so many ways, absolutely living a dream that I didn’t have the ability to even articulate when I was younger. I lacked the language, the models of possibility, that so many queer and trans kids lack. It’s only been in the past decade and a half that I feel like I finally started to see and learn from people whose stories really resonated with me and what I was looking for. And it was through all of my communities—music, roller derby, burlesque and drag, Our Lives, and so on—that I found them.

I was born in Winona, Minnesota to a mother who taught elementary school and a father who spent his life as a Presbyterian minister. I was and am the youngest of three children, and I’ve been told that I both do and do not at all embody the “youngest child” stereotypes. I was and am a ham (see: attention hog) and a bit of a smart ass (see: surly and loud whenever I feel like I’m not being heard or taken seriously). I was drawn toward leadership roles, suffered a serious case of helium hand, and could be prone to rigidity when what was called for was softness and adaptability.

I adored my older siblings and was simultaneously tormented by them, my frustrations over which I took out on schoolyard bullies through too many tussles and fistfights to count. Justice—at least what I perceived to be just—was (and is) my driving motivation.

My parents never entirely knew what to do about their unusual, artsy, tempestuous children. All three of us were prone to fits of rage that were hard to explain or control. My temper mostly manifested in those schoolyard rumbles, always with boys, usually over gendered slights against myself or others who wouldn’t or couldn’t fight back. Funnily enough, I would later kiss a couple of those boys. The two extremes feel like a pretty apt summary of me as a kid—if I could beat (or match) you in a fight, and you still wanted to kiss me, then I was interested. I’m not saying this was healthy!

My mom was forever torn between her clear and deep love for her kids and her expectations of who she thought we ought to be. Wanting girl children she could dress up in frilly clothes and painted nails, she gave birth instead to two take-no-shit tomboys (both of whom grew up to be queer!). I climbed trees and played in the dirt and much preferred GI Joes to Barbies. I lusted after the outfits of the leading men in movies.

I don’t remember ever thinking much about my gender, although lots of people—adults and kids alike—didn’t hesitate to force me to confront it: “Are you a boy or a girl?” When that question was hurled at me with such clear anger or annoyance, over and over again, I answered “GIRL” with my whole chest. I only knew I wasn’t a boy, and that I didn’t like the implication that I was some kind of “other” that people thought was wrong. The world around me didn’t show me any other options or ways of being outside that binary, so I clung to “girl” and “woman” for years, despite the feeling that it wasn’t quite the right fit.

Core memories 

Four years old: A beautiful, sunny summer day. I was playing in the front yard of our little house next to dad’s church. I was wearing only shorts, reveling in the feeling of the sun on my bare chest. An older woman walked by and turned to stare at me. Then she raised a finger and her voice and called out, “Young girls don’t run around with their shirts off!” Shame burned my cheeks and I ran inside to find a t-shirt. I was mad at the woman and at myself for doing something that made her yell at me. I won’t take off my shirt in front of anyone again until my 20s.

Second grade: Our teacher announced that we’d be taking an “imaginary trip to England” for class, complete with a visit by “the Queen,” who was actually the English mom of one of our classmates. My own mother took this announcement to mean that we should dress up for the day and insisted I wear a dress to school. I had not done so since maybe once or twice in kindergarten, and I was not happy. Worse, when I got to school, it was clear that no one else’s parents had interpreted the event in the same way. At recess, I huddled in a corner, shivering and miserable during a snowy Minnesota winter day, cursing the whole idea that girls have to wear dresses for anything, ever, if they didn’t want to. Instead, I lusted after the suits and uniforms of the male characters in my favorite shows and movies:  Indiana Jones, Glory, and The Rocketeer.

As far back as I can remember, I fought my mom about wearing dresses. They made me feel a full-body ick that I didn’t yet have the language to explain. The compromise was always that I could wear what I wanted on most regular days but was required to put on a dress and tights for church and other special occasions. This was not a compromise I enjoyed, but already I was learning to take the small wins where I could.

Third grade: My older sister brings home a VHS copy of “Dirty Dancing” and we watch it obsessively until the rental is up. I’m not sure yet why I’m equally entranced by both Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray, by the way the dancing bodies move so closely together, and I sure as hell miss the entire illegal abortion plot. There’s a lot to learn about myself and the world.

Somehow, in the fifth grade, I convinced my parents to let me join my friend’s family’s Civil War reenacting group—portraying a young boy. I had been increasingly obsessed with that era of history since seeing the movie Glory and then attending a reenactment near our new home in northern Illinois. Reenactments were the perfect combination of history, acting, and playing dress-up for my adolescent interests. It never occurred to me to portray a girl. The idea of wearing a hoop skirt or a bonnet made my skin crawl. Without a second thought, I saved my allowances to buy my blue Union suit and dragged my parents to living history days all across the region.

I got my period at age 12. I sobbed in my mom’s lap while she tried to reassure me that it was a beautiful thing. I didn’t feel beautiful. I felt bereft at a body betraying me in a way I couldn’t yet articulate. Mom decided that I should start wearing bras, too, despite my utter lack of breasts. I insisted on sports bras instead of the thinner, lacy training bras she held up at the store. My friends at school noticed and laughed while pulling on the bra straps, unaware of how absolutely mortified I was by the whole thing.

Thank goodness for ’90s fashion. As I moved into my teenage years, I wore baggy clothes to hide the body I didn’t yet understand and sure as hell didn’t yet feel any sense of comfort in. I was drawn to punk and rave—the music and the culture—but I was too terrified to cut my hair short like I wanted. I had already become the target of regular verbal harassment and abuse by my peers and even adults for not fitting their idea of what a “girl” should look and act like. Instead, I grew my hair out into an absolutely unruly mop that I had no idea what to do with, and hated it. I hid my crushes on girls and boys, terrified of being perceived as having a sexuality. I went out of my way never to be physically affectionate with anyone, especially girls. Surely they would recoil. Surely they could tell.

An apocalypse 

Like most teenagers, I was fully absorbed in the project of self-discovery, trying a little bit of a lot, following my heart and my head into everything from learning to play the drums to playing Dungeons & Dragons to writing underground newsletters (that would get me suspended from school at one point!). I was making friends, losing friends, lusting after friends, being confused about whether I was just really fascinated by that girl or maybe wanted to kiss her.

In the middle of all that, my mom got sick. First, she had to have a benign cyst removed from her pituitary gland, a surgery that seemed to go well and we all breathed a sigh of relief. A year later the cyst came back, and so the doctors removed it again, and that time they left behind a stent in the hopes that it would prevent another recurrence. What we didn’t know until many years later was that the stent was from a contaminated batch that gave my mom a fungal infection in her brain. She spent two years in and out of surgeries, the ICU, and rehab facilities battling the seemingly never ending infections and brain damage that resulted.

At 15 years old, with my two older siblings out of the house and just me and dad at home, I found myself acting as one of two primary caregivers for my mom. I learned how to help her dress, use the bathroom, eat food, and kept an eye out for times she got confused and tried to get behind the wheel of our minivan, convinced she had errands to run. I picked her up and checked her over after falls. I gave the stink eye to people who stared at the helmet she had to wear to protect her head after doctors removed a section of skull bone to alleviate swelling.

I also learned how to compartmentalize the hell out of my feelings. It was far too overwhelming to really think about how I felt about what was happening to my mom and my utterly changed life. I played shows with my punk band and pined over unrequited crushes and went to Medieval Times for friends’ birthdays—and then I went home and entered an entirely different world.

On a beautiful, sunny September morning, while I sat and daydreamed in Algebra class, I was summoned to the principal’s office. Dad was waiting for me there, and though he didn’t say anything, I knew in my gut why. He took me home, where the assistant pastor at his church was waiting along with my brother and sister—suddenly back from their lives out-of-town. Mom had gone brain dead early that morning. A massive brain hemorrhage. She was being kept on life support long enough for us to say our goodbyes.

Learning to love the marathon, not the sprint 

For a long time, I measured my life in Before and After my mom died. I understand why. I was just shy of 16 years old at the time—she was only 50. I am sure now that experiencing that kind of cataclysmic event played a large role in how I lived my life after. I had always been curious, outgoing, and energetic. It was like all of that became turbo-charged in the aftermath. Suddenly knowing how short life could be, that I or anyone I loved could die at any moment, made me determined not to waste any time.

Playing in multiple bands. Helping organize and write for a grassroots media website called Dane101 (RIP). Co-producing the Fire Ball Masquerade for 10 years (also RIP). Editing Our Lives. Joining roller derby (going on 13 years now!). Being a blogger. Being an opinion columnist. Somehow becoming a blogger again (but in newsletter form). Taking up photography. Acting on stage. Acting in a web series. DJing a radio show. Becoming a club DJ. Joining a prescribed fire team. I’m not about to list my entire resume here, but you get the picture.

One of the most common questions people have asked me throughout most of my adult life is, “When do you have time to sleep?” The secret is that sleep is very important to me and, thankfully, I tend to sleep pretty well. But as I’ve gotten older, I do understand why people wonder. It’s only recently that I’ve finally begun to do the work to see where I’m overdoing it, being too hard on myself to be “productive” and “useful,” and letting myself be choosier about how I spend my time and energy. I’m learning that it’s OK to just rest and spend time with people I love. That I should let myself be proud of what I’ve done and who I’ve become. The passage of time and new milestones to draw from help. Therapy has been good, too! It’s definitely an ongoing process.

Throughout all of it, figuring out my gender and sexuality has also been a journey. In some ways, losing my mom and then moving away from my dad (who retreated into his grief and then rebuilt a life with a new family—a good thing for him, but with the consequence of growing distance between us) gave me unexpected space to explore who I wanted to be. I don’t believe “things happen for a reason.” I just believe in taking what comes and deciding what you want to learn from it, and what you want to do next.

Just happy to be here 

I’ve come out as bisexual many times over the years: First, very tentatively, when I was 18 and living in southern Oklahoma on a dare to make out with a girlfriend at a party made it definitively clear to me that I was not straight. Most recently, just this year, when I was invited to be featured as part of a Lesbian History Month project and had to explain how that wasn’t quite accurate.

I turned 42 last November. I came out as genderqueer/trans just months before that. A decade after getting rid of the last, dusty dress I kept in my closet “just in case,” two decades after first fully coming out as queer, I feel the most comfortable with myself that I’ve ever been in my life. I like to describe myself as having a masculine side that’s a butch dyke, a feminine side that’s a swishy leather twink, and a secret third thing that swims around both.

I know there’s more to come. I continue to learn about myself and about the endlessly possible ways to live a life, every day.

There are times I feel resentful that it took me “so long” to get to this place. There are other times I’m just filled with gratitude for making it here at all. A lot of amazing queer and trans people never got to grow older, several of whom were friends of mine. I miss them every day.

So as I continue to age and my hair grows ever more silver, I’m determined to lean into my queer “elder” stage as it comes. Gay Jesus knows we need and deserve more role models for queer and trans aging, in all its glory and challenges and diversity. I’m ridiculously grateful to those who came before me, and those who are coming up after, for everything they are and will continue to contribute to pushing the needle and making things better for us all. It’s one hell of an amazing community to be part of, flaws and all.

A story worth sharing 

I thought for a long time about what I wanted to say in this piece, which thread to pull on in the messy tapestry of my life so far for the sake of, I hope, being at all interesting to you the reader. I also considered what felt like something I really wanted to share right now. Like anyone else, there are so many themes and experiences, changes and realizations, that it would be impossible to cram it all into a few thousand words and have it be remotely readable. Given that this is
Our Lives, though, and given that I’m in my early 40s and only just came out as trans/genderqueer, talking about my winding path to something like gender euphoria felt appropriate.

I look back at the scrappy tomboy who held fiercely to their wants and needs and ways of expression, who fought (sometimes literally) to be understood, who sometimes overcorrected and was a mean little shit to others without cause, and I feel love for them. They had no idea what they were doing! But they survived long enough, with enough sense of self in tact, to meet and be open to the people who would help me become more fully myself. And to turn that into a story worth sharing.