Where do I start? I did not really get that I was different right away. I saw it more as endless frustration of having people tell me what I could not do. So many rules and restrictions that just annoyed the crap out of me. I was daddy's little girl just not in the traditional sense. My dad loved to lift weights and exercise. We had matching Six Million Dollar Man track suits and when dad lifted his weights I had a plastic bar with foam on both ends. I remember seriously studying his form and trying to mimic everything, including all the grunting from lifting the weight off the ground. Dad would always look down at me, smile and shake his head.
Every Sunday after church we would go for a walk in the park or change into our track suits and go to run laps. It was absolute fun for me though the family thought it a bit strange for a girl. I wanted to grow up to be just like my dad. I practiced shaving once and boy did that bay stuff dad patted on his cheeks sting. I think my dad knew I was different yet it was only when he was around that I felt like everyone else. I did not fit in without him there for comfort and reassurance.
Dad got sick often and would have to be committed for months at a time. I was miserable every time he went away. My grand mother, dad's mum, thought he was not "raising me right" and would spend all her time trying to teach me how to be a proper lady. I spent days inside with books on my head walking in tiny steps since lady's do not gallop. Or practicing the correct way to cross my legs; at the ankles of course because I will grow up to be a woman not a man and only men sit the way I did. Let's also not forget being tied to a chair with a stick along my spine because lady's do not slouch; they have perfect posture. The lectures were twice as bad. I was informed how badly I was disappointing my father with my behaviour. Climbing trees, associating with boys at my age, playing rough games with the neighbourhood boys and there could only be one reason why I preferred to play with them and not the girls. As I said, it was miserable those months without my dad.
When dad was around he would brush off my grandmother's constant complaints and I would skip happily away to build go carts, scooters, play football, climb trees and pretend to dig up dinosaur bones in the back yard. I would make a wish on the first star at night that my dad would not get sick again. My grandmother was obsessed with changing my behaviour. The scoldings turned to spankings. My father came home one day to find me in the midst of a panic attack during a spanking from my grandmother for building a bridge across our beds and pretending to be Indiana Jones. I remember thinking that I didn't know why I was being spanked since I did not invite my cousin to walk across and fall. Then dad saw a NOVA special about spanking causing trauma in children and leading to a life of S&M so he put his foot down about that. It only made my grandmother more obsessed with finding another way to fix me.
I was banned from going outside, going to far away from the house and playing with certain toys. I would look outside the window and watch everyone else play. Even the way I ate was picked at. I simply could do nothing right to appease my grandmother. I was a plump kid and it hurt to be told I should mind the way I ate since without looks there was no way I would be attracting a husband. I was depressed. I stopped eating. I stopped talking for almost a year. This was around the time I began to get sick and we realised I was anemic. I don't remember much except seeing tons of doctors about my blood, finding the benign tumor on my eye, listening to them tell my dad I may go blind and then having surgery.
My dad was becoming worried. I confided in my cousin when I was 8 that I wanted to cut my hair. So she dared me to and even got her mother's scissors to help me along before she ran off to tell. My dad walked in just as the first braid was falling to the floor. Dad approached me slowly, knelt down, put his hand out and softly asked for the scissors. I gave them to him. He reached out hugged me to him and cried. I am my father's only child. After that ordeal everyone was told to leave me alone; including my grandmother. I started getting the toys I asked for; G.I. Joe action figures, X-Men, Dr. Strange, Fantastic 4 and Superman comics. I think my mum may have had a hand in all that. I was allowed to hang out with my friends again. To climb trees, play in the dirt, and go exploring.
From what my grandmother described, I was not a girl and yet I did not feel like a boy either. Both sets of stereotypes alone did not describe me. It was like being both at once and I could go either way depending on outside interpretation. I was envious of my cousin whom the family called Georgie and I called George, that she could walk around proudly with a boyish name and I couldn't. She could do no wrong because she was such a girl, a sissy girl I called her in secret, and I was so obviously not. I realise now that I took solace at school with other kids who were like me. Other androgynous and gender queer kids. At school I learned about this thing called "being adopted" and started scrutinizing my family. I didn't look like anyone there or act like anyone there so that had to be it. I thought maybe all I had to do was find the right family.
Skipping over a whole bunch of stuff, I went to live with my mum when I was 10. I thought it was wonderful. Girls could wear pants without question in the US or maybe it was just outside my family but either way it was great. Schools encouraged you to play all sports in gym and I loved baseball. Every day after school I would go to the corner store and buy baseball cards. The guys and I would sit with our albums during lunch and let the trading begin. My mother has always been for gender equality yet you can't have two stubborn personalities in the same space. After living all those years with my grandmother telling me what to do and how I wasn't a good enough girl, I hated having anyone tell me anything.
I fell in love with baseball caps at age 11. Oh how it felt to finally have all that hair just disappear and I could finally feel as though I looked as I should. I think it may have been my mum that renamed me Jo. Shortened my full name. Overjoyed is one way to describe it as I really do dislike my birth name. Everyone has always told my mum that they thought she had two sons until they met us. Jo and Chris. I was happy with my body until the age of 11. Suddenly it was like these heavy weights grew on my chest overnight and I couldn't get rid of them. I would bind them, wear a tight t-shirt under a loose t-shirt, anything to minimize them. Make them go away. They irritated me since they prevented me from continuing as usual. No more running, jumping, climbing it was frustrating. They just weren't practical. The guys didn't know what to make of them either. They'd either pretend they weren't there, act uncomfortable for accidentally touching them when playing football or stare intently at them. Boobs put a serious crimp in my life.
I was raped when I was 11, by my 16 yr old step-cousin. I was not noticed in that way until the day my uncle and his wife decided to take me shopping and changed my wardrobe. Gone were the boyish clothes I preferred and now I had skirts. Skirts. I hate skirts. Have you ever tried to climb a fence or tree in a skirt? You can't take proper strides in the long ones. I always felt constrained in skirts. My step-cousin never noticed me until the day I put on that blue mini skirt my aunt bought. The satin nightgown cinched the deal the first night he raped me. The words I heard my grandmother say all those years ago were repeated to me. You don't act like a girl so I'm going to teach you how to be one. Call it corrective rape.
My art teacher unwittingly helped me escape by teaching us meditation one day. Had us visualize a trip to Sweden for chocolate. One thing guaranteed to get a child's attention. I did that during another rape of my body and it was like I was not there. I don't know how to put it into words to realise it's only a body and he had not touched ME. After that it was relief because I had found a way to protect myself. I did lots of things with my body during that year that I wouldn't be able to remember because I wasn't there mentally. One day I got tired and decided I'd had enough. There wasn't anything else more horrifying that what was already happening. So I refused to submit. My step-cousin pulled a gun and I leaned my head forward until it touched my forehead and told him to shoot. Death was better than that.
Nothing inside really changed. If anything I was now determined NOT to be anything I was not and that was pretending to be totally feminine. I told folks up front, this is who I am, this is how I am and what you see is what you get. I'm not changing for anyone. Take me or leave me.
I think even so my mum and dad after all those years simply thought it was a phase. That I was only a tomboy and would eventually grow out of it. I'm not a tomboy. Tomboys still identify as girls. I never have. I've always felt, in my platonic and romantic relationships, that I'm more of a masculine personality because it's usually what I'm eventually labeled. I'm always the one that ends up in the stereotypical male position. The parting shot has always been "you're not a real woman".
I've always felt like shouting in frustration "just spell it out for me! why all the mental circles? what do you want from me?" I'm always left out of sorts in relationships because friends and partners expect a cis woman with all the stereotypical behaviour and I don't ever meet those expectations. It's like very bad acting with a partial script and a dick of a director. I never know WHAT they want from me or WHAT they expect and usually just feel uncomfortable. Truth be told, I find people with preconceived notions of gender utterly confusing.
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