Hello my friend! The end of the semester is approaching, which means that this will be my final post on Queeries. It has been a pleasure writing for you, between sharing my favorite pieces of queer media and probably way too much about my personal life. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I hope you have both enjoyed my posts and taken something away from them to apply to your own life and sense of identity. For this final post, I would like to take this space to do a little bit of an update and a self reflection.

First, I simply want to acknowledge how far I have come in terms of fully embracing and accepting myself. I now have days where I just feel so gay or so genderqueer and it’s so fun because I get to make myself look really cool and queer. I will legitimately look at myself in the mirror and audibly say “I love being gay,” perhaps several times a day sometimes. Now that I’m being totally authentic, I feel like an actual person with a genuine personality, which is new.

Last Thursday, I decided to officially change my pronouns to they/he (and by “officially,” I mean updating them in my Instagram bio and telling a few friends lol). Most of the change is just fully admitting to myself that I much greatly prefer they/he over they/he/she pronouns. I’ve known for a while that I don’t like she/her pronouns or female gendered language (e.g. woman, girl, lady, daughter, sister), but I kept the “she” in my list for a long time. This was mostly to make other people feel better and more comfortable, especially my family while I’m not out to them. And it was also partially to make myself feel better anytime anyone misgendered me because I know it will inevitably happen pretty frequently while I look the way I do. After coming out to my mom and admitting this to her, I finally decided to take it off my pronoun list. After all, my pronouns are for me alone, and there is no reason for me to make people feel better about misgendering me. 

Last weekend, I had two formals for the Schreyer Honors College and the Society of Physics Students. For the first one on Friday night, I wore my strawberry dress (yes it is THE strawberry dress), further yassified with lots of jewelry and cowboy boots. It was fun dressing up in my strawberry dress again, but I found it funny that it was less than 24 hours after I changed my pronouns to they/he (which is perfectly valid, may I remind you, because pronouns do not necessarily equal gender identity or gender expression). By the end of the night, I was very ready to change into jeans, a T-shirt with cats on it, and platform converse though. 

The next night I had my other formal, to which I wore an all black suit. I also did my makeup in a new more masculine way (thanks to advice from McKenna). Now that slapped. I was absolutely thriving and I felt so good and so *gender*. I would have stayed in it longer if I wasn’t going to bed. It was an immaculate night and I was in such a good mood because I felt much more like myself.

I think the final step toward acceptance of my identity will be coming out to the rest of my family, which includes my 5 siblings and my dad, the latter of which I know will be the hardest for me.I have thought about just coming out to all of my siblings via text in our sibling group chat because it would be so so easy, but I’ve decided to let them know in person with the hope that it could lead to some deeper conversations and bring us closer together, because while we grew up spending a lot of time together, I wouldn’t consider us to be very close since we have never shared much personal stuff from our lives. I’m hoping I can start to change that before we all get too much older.

This is most definitely not the end of my identity journey. I still have a decent amount to eventually figure out, but I’m not in a particular rush to find a label because I’ll learn more about myself in time. I have still come so far since being in college and starting this blog last semester. While maybe not having the perfect labels, I have fully embraced my queer and genderqueer identity, which I would argue is largely more important to living authentically and happily. Above all, I’m glad that I could share this part of my identity journey with you all over the course of this year. If you’re a regular reader here, it means a lot to me that you stuck with me through all of this, and I hope I was able to help you, too.

I suppose this is a rather bittersweet ending to this chapter of my life then, summed up by this final conclusion to Queeries. As always and for forever, I’m immensely proud of you for just existing and being your cool authentic self and doing your best. My love for you is immeasurable! Make sure to show yourself some love too, because if you’re anything like me, I know that can be very hard. But it is indeed possible given some time and effort. I wish you so much luck and genuine happiness in your journey ahead, whether that is an identity journey or just the wild journey of life. You’ll do great out there! Hold your head up high and find a good reason to smile. You’ve got this!

 

With so much love,

PJ <3

 

 

Photo Credits

Image 1, Image 4