top of page
Search
  • Writer's picturecelestite poetry

Existing Between Cisgender Lines - Katie Proctor

It takes nothing less than a remarkable amount of strength to live incessantly justifying yourself to others.


That’s a lesson I learned from a few things I’ve been through. I learned it from unapologetically identifying as non-binary after years of going back and forward. I have indistinct memories of early secondary school – I was going through a lot of change, moving house and moving school, and struggling with my mental health, eventually being diagnosed with OCD in 2016 aged almost 13. But I do remember discovering the word “non-binary” for the first time, and feeling an affinity with the posts I read on Tumblr. I remember telling my friends just a few months after coming out as bisexual, saying that I wanted to be referred to by different pronouns. I started to feel the tightness in my chest every time my teachers would say “girls”. After a while it disappeared to emptiness and I learned to tune it out a little better, even though it never stopped feeling incongruent with the way I saw myself.


I don’t blame any of my friends or the people around me for the way things turned out when I announced I was not a girl and not a “she”. As I wrote about in my post On Queer Love, I attended a very small single-sex school in the middle of nowhere. The idea of bisexuality existing outside my phone and inside myself had seemed outlandish even to me earlier that year. I look back on those early years with pride that, although the responses I got to my attempts at identifying how I did affected my confidence in coming out later on, I was brave in even trying to do so at all. A couple of months ago I found a notebook from around that time, literally falling apart at the seams and filled with things I could barely remember. On the cover page in my messy handwriting I read “Katie Proctor, Year 8, They/them”.


What I didn’t know then that I know all too well now and would find out later, is that just the act of existing openly and almost proudly in that environment could have put me in danger for a number of reasons. With that knowledge, I try to be kinder to the person I was in the years between then and now. Despite my best attempts, nobody did a great job of using my pronouns correctly, and nobody could really even grasp what I meant when I tried to explain my gender. It was then that I learned how tiring it can be to advocate for yourself. I was tired of spending time trying to help people understand, and tired of nobody listening.


It was that genuine exhaustion that made me go quiet about being non-binary. I grew louder talking about my sexuality, coming to identify as a lesbian later and attending Pride events, making social media posts highlighting queer issues and openly telling people I was gay. While I did that, I allowed people to call me “she”, even though I didn’t like it. I didn’t tell anyone it wasn’t right, or it wasn’t what I wanted. I just let it happen.


My silence on gender was never intentional. It was self-preservation really, as I’m sure many non-binary people understand. Sometimes it’s easier to say nothing than for your best laid plans to go wrong no matter what. I wasn’t afraid of criticism. Being told I “didn’t exist” or my pronouns didn’t make sense didn’t bother me. I was afraid of the initial understanding and support fading away. I was afraid of a lack of true effort. I was afraid of my existence being seen as an inconvenience.


Eventually in December 2020, following the outpouring of support on social media for Elliot Page, I told a friend how I felt. The people closest to me had known for months, and their using neutral pronouns for me in private had confirmed what I had known all that time ago at 12 years old. I had no doubt anymore.


I was still afraid. I knew that it was going to be difficult. It was going to be all the things I was worried it would be. There were going to be people who didn’t really try, who said they cared but didn’t follow through. There was going to be the surface-level activism, the resharing of posts I’d spent hours writing but the failure to address me correctly. I accepted all those things.


I decided it was worth it if I got to live authentically, and stop lying to myself about what I really felt and wanted. And it was. It is. It is inexplicably tiring, and sometimes I do wonder why I didn’t just keep it quiet and accept that I’d never really be able to do this. After all, I was still at school, still hearing “girls” every day, still feeling out of place.


There is a severe lack of understanding surrounding the non-binary identity. That is indisputable. It shouldn’t require strength, stress, upset and pain to come out. I, and no other non-binary person, should have to accept that living openly and honestly will come with those feelings of frustration. Cisgender people undoubtedly need to do better. How many conversations, how many viral Tweets will it take for the minimum amount of effort to be put in to make someone feel comfortable?


I wonder to myself often – was it worth it? If I could go back, would I? Some days I want to say yes, without a doubt. I want it to be easier. I want it to be simpler. But after such a long time of settling for second best, and accepting my own discomfort, I know I made the right decision. Existing as I am alone, regardless of anyone else, is worth it. I only hope soon, the world will make it easier.


-


Katie Proctor (they/them) is a poet from Yorkshire, England. They write freeform poetry and prose typically regarding their experience with love, relationships and mental health. Their debut collection of poetry, Seasons, was published in 2020, and their sophomore collection A Desire for Disaster will be published later this year, both by Hedgehog Poetry. They are the editor-in-chief of celestite poetry, a journal of creative writing and non-fiction. They are a student with a passion for literature, history and classics, and plan to study English Literature at university. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram @katiiewrites.

71 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

The Relapse - Lauren Curr

TW: alcoholism I recently started watching Grey’s Anatomy and to say I whizzed through it is a bit of an understatement; it’s my current hyperfixation (as I am neurodivergent) and I quite literally am

Rejection of Allyship Fatigue - Sagal Mahamud

The revolution will not be televised. We cannot capture the raw passion and frustrations from which revolutions are born on film. Similarly, we cannot adequately express these sentiments on social med

bottom of page