I came up with a new name for myself.

I now sit, isolated, in my room, continuing to rationalize this decision, not for the sake of my sanity but, instead, for the protection of an identity that I formulated to appeal to those around me. My self-doubt and hatred come from this persona; she transforms and metamorphosizes into an easily perceivable person and loses her individuality.

I am told that I have a gift; an ability to adapt to my surroundings, to give people theconfidence to feel secure in themselves and I defuse any situation, awkward or not, with laughter. Instead, it is a plague that causes me to lose my identity. This persona is presented so that others do not have to struggle to understand me. From the moment they see what I am wearing, hear my voice, ask my name, pronouns, I am being perceived, and then instantly judged or admired by whoever is looking at me. These interactions are performative. When I am alone, however, I create the persona I wish I would project publicly. And in my head, my thoughts are almost as if I were constantly rehearsing for my next conversation in order to prove my capabilities. I read Thoreau, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nabokov, Chomsky. I watch Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Holy Mountain” and exclaim that I understand all the levels and the pitfalls of capitalism. All of this knowledge is surface level, especially when I do not apply it to anything in my life. And this is when I begin again a cycle of conformity that I try so desperatelyto escape. In interaction with those around me, I realize that I begin to do the same thing to them, that I fear them doing to me. I judge them based on their clothes, their voice, their laugh and I wonder; is it human nature to start categorizing a person the moment you see them? Is it a survival instinct to determine if this person is a threat? We have created so many sub-cultures and genres for people to exist under which has expanded our limits of interpretation, but how long until we demolish those categories and simply co-exist as humans?

A survival instinct so often used by humans is to define the unknown. We fear what we do not understand and to avoid living in perpetual fear we assign labels and compartmentalize. But there will always be the unexplainable. There will never be a time where we can describe everything that exists because the Universe is infinite and ever-expanding. It is foolish to believe that time is stagnant, even amid a pandemic where nothing seems to be changing. You cannot dispute the science. However, much of our complex lives are outside of those definitions, creating art, identity, culture. We define countries, race, culture, sexuality, gender, and by doing so we differentiate but simultaneously assign meaning to these things that otherwise would not exist. By defining everything we put ourselves in a box, and then we expand that box by creatingmore terms for people to identify. Defining sexuality, clothing style, gender, is important and essential in a fight for acceptance, but it’s even more important to remember what the final goal of acceptance is.

I have only had so much time to think about myself in isolation. In my time away frompeople I have gone through more personal change than I ever did in my freshman and sophomoreyears. I have gone through physical change, mental change, and individual “inner” change that feels like it should have been drawn out through the span of 3 years instead of 8 months. Time passing is no longer marked by months but by my internal calendar, menstruation. A beautiful bodily function that tells time, and would continue without time, as a concept, even existing. It shows me that I continue to grow and change when life feels static. Menstruation has long been attached to femininity. And without it someone might begin to question their womanhood. I’ve come to learn that the correlation between the two is not comparable because femininity is not based on whether or not you are a woman. And although I am confident with my identity, I long have questioned the binary that society has created.

Even as I grow I feel trapped. I started to realize that all the labels I have been subjected to are not substantial and hold no meaning, except for the one we assign to them. We assume skirts are for girls and suits are for boys and some are even threatened by anyone who dares to break these normalities. But skirts are for whomever. I hate the two perceivable binaries because they hold no meaning to me. Existing beyond all labels is my final goal, and that way I can begin to exist beyond the minds of my peers. This is the most comfortable I have been. I created a new name for myself, not to create a new identity, but to comment on the absurdity of human perception. Any ideas that you carried about me, anyone that you thought I was, they are false and no one will ever understand me more than myself, and I shall live happily knowing.