am I a boy or girl

Which one is it? How did you decide? What is a boy? A girl? Are they opposite? Why do you say that? Why pink? Why blue?

All my life I thought I was a boy. I never really questioned why. Others had the questions. Other boys on the playground. Everyone had to be one or the other. And if they stepped outside of that role they got teased, taunted, spit on, assaulted.

We didn't ever know why we did this, acting out this brutality. It just came out of us. We didn't remember that these roles were quite harshly stamped on us against what little wills we had when we were still babies. Everything is bigger than you when you're a baby, and you have to just survive it. Most of it just gets in you and you forget.

Am I still a boy? Why? Did I ever change for a moment? Was I ever outside of the opposites?

I went on every day trying to maintain all the ways I was supposed to be a boy. But eventually I had to decide to violate one of the major rules: thou shalt not love other boys. It took me twenty years to do this. The early conditioning ran deep. But I am better for any way I fought against it. I am better for having tried to be true to myself.

Why keep it up? Why boy? Why girl?

I will create other options. Possibilities as yet unimagined.

I choose neither.