It promotes the idea of an intense soul connection between two people thought to be each other’s half. The concept has seen increased popularity in recent times. Twin flames, also called “mirror souls,” are terms used to describe a relationship ideology rooted in new-age spiritualism. Most importantly, his favorite dinosaur is the Allosaurus fragilis.Share on Pinterest Nancybelle Gonzaga Villarroya/Getty Images – A’liya Spinner (he/him & she/her) is a non-binary activist, author, and aspiring paleogeneticist. Until we are all accepted for who we are, inside and out. By protecting my peers and the next generation, and doing my part to change the world until there are no more names on that little altar. I can honor them- not by burying my identity to stay safe and quiet, but by embracing my gender queerness. All those names- I can’t bring them back. What I needed was a community, a place and a people to share my load and celebrate my joys.Įven several years later, there’s a wound from that day that never quite healed I feel it still, when I think of that shrine. Now I use that life to help others, to lead them towards a gentler moment of self-acceptance and a community that loves despite all it has lost.Īll that time I thought the key to queer euphoria was something I had to find on my own. It took a painful awakening for me to realize I wasn’t alone, and it changed my life forever. High school is a vulnerable time for everyone, but especially LGBTQ+ students who feel isolated. What I needed was a community, a place and a people to share my load and celebrate my joys. It was the first time I’d been so fully accepted by a community it was the first time I felt safe being fully, authentically queer.Īll that time I thought the key to queer euphoria was something I had to find on my own. My peers offered tips on how to dress, where to go for help, what to say to administration they’d been through it, too. Every time I was asked for my pronouns, I became more confident with my answer. When I wanted to try out a new name, I was met with kindness and immediate support. But I began to see it wasn’t true I was listened to, I was comforted. I went solemnly to the next GSA meeting, thinking that the sadness and anxiety would never go away. The shards fell away and left me open and raw and bleeding from the heart. My glass shell shattered- the dragon burst free of its prison. My eyes blurred until I could no longer read the names- the text was already so small to fit them all- and I began to cry. I felt my heart beating in my chest and my cheeks beginning to burn. I stood before that altar as students surged around me. People.īeneath it was names and ages and places- hundreds of them, stapled to the wall, wrapping around the entire display. They were the names of transgender people who had been murdered around the world that year. Beneath it was names and ages and places- hundreds of them, stapled to the wall, wrapping around the entire display. Someone had written Trans Day of Remembrance on printer paper tacked to the top of a corkboard. In that little glass case were fake blue and pink flowers and plastic candles, shining dimly from years of draining battery. It was then I found myself before the GSA’s latest project- a shrine, and a gravestone. I was successful in my disconnection until one day, unable to resist investigation of anything new, I took a detour on the way to class towards a display case in the hall. And it was because of this that I avoided my school’s bustling Gay-Straight Alliance, knowing that joining them would force me to wrestle a veritable dragon of gender dysphoria. Everything else I shoved down and pretended not to feel when I looked in the mirror. Not, of course, that there is anything “less” about being “only” bisexual- rather, I was expressing just the part of myself that fit a cisheteronormative mold. My sapphic-bent bisexuality was enough, I thought, to land me in the “gay jokes and rainbows” category without the grit of being more openly queer. It was my sophomore year of high school I had questioned my gender, but I didn’t dare express it. For me, there is only one “what”, a single moment that forever changed my life. T he real question is what- what grabbed you by the throat and forced you to acknowledge that you were living in gender denial. “Why are you non-binary?” “Why do you subject yourself to this?” But every “why” is missing the point there are a thousand whys, each with a different answer. As an activist, a community leader, and a queer person, I am often asked why.
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