Fragments

In my hands I hold many fragments of time. Not all of them are mine⁠—some are my parents; others belong to my brother. The cover of this photo album is thick⁠—appearing to be padded if you glance quickly at it. A white square sits in the middle. If you were to run your hand over it you would stir up a layer of dust, some lifting to dance in the air while the rest sticks to the oil on your fingers. Lift the front cover and you would find the pages thick, filled with colourful pieces of paper next to grainy photos of smiling faces. A thin sleeve of plastic shields the photos and, as you turn the pages of thick card again and again, the colourful paper would fade away until there was no more. Yet the vibrancy remains if only in the windows of memory.

Many of our photo albums are like this. Attempts to retain memories of years long past, started out with vigour and passion only for the task to seem more like a chore than a treat. If the vibrancy of these pages diminishes, the snapshots remain cheerful - unaware of a certain hollowness in their newfound home.

There is a series of photographs near the beginning of the album. I wouldn’t even have to hold the book in my hands to know this. It is set in the fields, hay freshly baled and not wrapped yet. On top of the bales there are two children posing atop. A boy and what appears to be a girl, young - perhaps younger than five. The boy has blue eyes and short ginger hair stuck up at the front of his face in a cowlick, his head tilted slightly as he flashes a toothy smile at the camera. A companion photo shows another child with the appearance of a girl. Dark blonde hair that reaches just to the shoulders, blue eyes crinkled from a blinding smile as she poses with one hand on her hip. I cannot help but notice this girl. “What a poser,” I mutter. Much later, it dawns on me that I wasn’t talking about her posture.

*

Two weeks after turning five, a girl of grace ceased to exist. I do not regret getting rid of her.

*

Both of my grandfathers are dead. I didn’t know them very well, one died before I could make a conscious choice and the other before I could learn the value of what he might have taught me. They are lost to me, and I wonder about them.

My mum tells me that her father was a joiner. He disliked children, though he had two, and built me a dollhouse of wood when I was too young to appreciate it. I imagine it was not soon after that he died of cancer. In his and his wife’s old house⁠—the house in which they spent many years raising a family in⁠—I used to go to my aunt’s childhood room to read my mum’s old books.

It’s hard to imagine the room being lived in. It consisted only of weathered books and boxes covered in dust. The carpet was barely even a carpet, and if you stayed in the room for too long, you’d start to itch. Anything of comfort was dragged up there by me and my brother⁠—spare pillows and old blankets. The room felt painfully dull, filled with still, brown air. It was never my room, yet I feel safe whenever I think of it. I wonder why it is that the room I can only revisit in my memories makes me feel more at home than the house I grew up in. Is it the knowledge that someone’s lived there before me? Was the warmth passed on?

Unable to comfortably move up and down the stairs, my gran had to move house eventually. We visited to help clean out the rooms and it was in my reading room that I found a pink plastic swan. There was only one person that had lived in that house who could have crafted it, so I carefully placed it in my pocket and took it home to my childhood room where it remains. A fragment of a world lost and a person I never knew.

I lived next door to my dad’s father and got the chance to spend more time with him as a result. He was a farmer. Even when the farm was shut down, he never really stopped. A man who liked to be outdoors, who always went and fed the chickens although they were my brother’s to look after. I can recall when I was younger that he was a smoker, though at some point he replaced nicotine with sweets. Whenever I eat Werther’s Originals, I think of him.

I would say he dressed like a farmer: thick trousers, tweed bonnet, a woollen jumper underneath a bodywarmer. Some may say he was the unlucky sort when it came to health. He needed glasses as many do in their old age, but he got Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and then cancer. Both my health and fashion sense are like gifts from him.

My own memory is scattered⁠—older than it should be⁠—but I see my grandfathers in my mind sometimes. In objects. In my fashion choices. Some days, I wake up and contemplate talking to them only to realise… aren’t they dead? Gone? Lost to time?

*
Wreath was born briefly when I was fourteen. He didn’t stay for long⁠—more a joke than a person.

*

On boxing day of 2007, I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. This is a fact that I don’t keep a secret, though people sometimes act as though I should. Should I be ashamed? Every week for several years, I would find myself taken out of school to visit the hospital. Every morning I would take pills. Some days I would be forced to take extra. I accepted very easily that I would be known as the ‘Cancer Kid’ in my school –I saw no reason to reject such a fact. Even now, I have to put the rest of my life on pause in order to go for an annual check-up. Illness became a part of me. Years into remission, it’s still a part of me. Eventually, I found myself past acceptance and heading towards what Liesbet Van Bulck has ironically termed enrichment[iii]. Would I be who I am now if I had never gotten Leukaemia? Perhaps I would be more active outdoors like the rest of my family. Perhaps I would find it easier to socialise. Undoubtedly, I wouldn’t have read as much. It is useless to think about, yet I wonder.

It was late 2018, long after going into remission for Leukaemia, that I had my first seizure. Not soon after, I was diagnosed with Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. Being diagnosed with epilepsy seemed only to be a minor setback. The only thing that changed in my life was the number of pills I took each day. ‘Who am I?’ is supposedly a common question to ask after being diagnosed as epileptic[iv]. Admi and Shaham found that the young people they talked to found epilepsy less central in their lives. That they are simply people with health conditions living their lives as best they can. In contrast, people in their early twenties found it interrupted their plans for the future⁠—their chances of finding employment, their hopes for a family. Radley and Frank, meanwhile, suggest that having moments of being unable to control your body would shift your perception of self. Unable to control your body, loss of memory. Your life changes. Daily pills, regular visits to the hospital, triggers to watch out for. Some medicine can even impact your chances of having children. My own medication boosts the chances of any children I may have being severely disabled. I’d already been through a serious illness and lived to tell the tale. There is no rejection to be had. Denying its existence would do nothing. Yet there is no enrichment, only exhaustion… a feeling of ‘oh, this again.’ It was with world-weary acceptance that I took on the mantle of being epileptic. What about the future? Isn’t it useless to think about the future when we haven’t even made it through the present?

My brother rarely falls sick. I see the humour of it⁠—I get ill so he doesn’t have to. When you’re suffering, it’s as though you’ve been tossed in the middle of the ocean when you don’t know how to swim, then being handed an uninflated life raft and told to blow it up. Is there any point in complaining when you’re just trying to stay adrift with the hand you’ve been dealt?

*

At four, a pure girl was breathed into existence. She evaporated as quickly as she arrived.

*

When I was five, I was given my first video game: Pokémon Diamond. As a staple of the series, one of the game’s main tasks is to catch and train the titular Pokémon as you journey across the country. During my travels, a random NPC (non-player character) told me, ‘What can I tell you about Pokémon? Well, there are males and females. And some that you can’t tell!’[v]

This was my first exposure to a third option. A throwaway line which was promptly forgotten until years later when I stumbled upon it in a screenshot. Look, the caption of the screenshot seemed to say, we exist. In reality, the text was about fictional magic animals and not humans, yet many felt validated anyway.

There’s a scramble for recognition: to be seen. For our existence to not be erased.

In popular indie game Undertale[vi] made almost solely by Toby Fox, you play a non-binary human child referred to throughout much of the story by variants of ‘human’, or with the pronouns ‘they/them’ until their name is revealed at the end to be Frisk⁠—distinctly gender neutral. Despite this, very few people seem to recognise the gender neutrality so integral to the character. The character is simply gender ambiguous[vii]– a blank slate for the player to project onto no matter their gender. Frisk is the player. You can name them what you want, suggested by Fox to be after yourself. Whatever gender you wish them to be in the moment. Yet, curiously, as you go through the game, no one refers to you by said name. By the end, in a twist of sorts, you find out that what you have named isn’t really Frisk at all. Frisk is the player character, they are you. Yet, paradoxically, they are not you. In his subsequent game, Deltarune[viii], Fox continues this trend. The protagonist is androgynous in appearance, a human child this time called Kris. Most notably however is the plot-relevant insistence that Kris is their own being who had a life before you, the player, took over. They are openly referred to with ‘they/them’ pronouns exclusively. They are not a ‘player stand-in,’ nor are they there for you to project upon. You control them, but they do not want you there. Multiple times over the course of the two currently available chapters they forcibly rip out their ‘soul’⁠—what you control in the game⁠—in order to momentarily continue their own life. Free from the presence of another. Free to be themself. For both Kris and Frisk, it is never outright stated that they are non-binary but then again, it’s rarely stated that characters that use ‘he/him’ are male or that characters that use ‘she/her’ are female. Yet they are simply not ‘up for debate.’ Why, then, is the gender of those who use ‘they/them’ considered unknown? The debate continues.

I wonder constantly whether people realise the harm they cause in refusing to acknowledge our existence. It’s an uphill battle that I’m too tired to fight.

*

At fifteen, a wise child began to exist. In their wisdom they were afraid, and so they stayed hidden.

*

I do not want to read about people ‘like me.’ My friends give me books about transgender individuals, about self-discovery and coming out. I cannot make it through these titles. It’s always about the struggle. It’s a struggle to be transgender, the books tell me, figuring yourself out leads to pain. They are eerily the same. They are stories filled with uncertainty and self-doubt that end in acceptance and hope[ix]. Closure. I am not uncertain, and I certainly don’t doubt who I am. I may question it, but I never doubt myself.

These books are all about the struggle of being transgender. The pain of existing. It consumes the characters and all they are. Their narrative/story arc drives them to acceptance, to coming out. Do they need to come out to be happy? Why are their stories only ever about feeling comfortable being transgender? Who are they? I am not me because I am transgender. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror. I may be there, reflected, but also distorted. I am more than these books would have you think, but you won’t be able to tell. You can only see the distortion.

My experience is unlikely to be singular, but it is certainly not story worthy. In the world of novels, I do not truly exist. There is no conflict around my gender and so there is no plot. My conflict lies elsewhere. It seems that there’s always a call for society to be more accepting, yet a society of such is rarely written about. Is there no value in the calm, in the ready acceptance of coming out?

*

I want to be a ghost. Not because I want to die, but because I don’t want to be perceived. An anonymous existence⁠—present but not seen. I do not want to be understood, even if others want to understand me[x]. If I isolate myself, I can pretend. No human contact except for the screen of the internet, an avatar the only proof that I am. But I am not that avatar. Eventually, I will have to step out. I will not be allowed to be nothing because I am something. Even something that people don’t understand. A figure in the fog; an illusion, a cube drawn on a piece of paper[xi] if Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane are to be believed. I am understood to be something I am not. All the observations are true; yet all observations are also false.

To be non-binary, is to be defined by what you are not instead of what you are[xii]. You are not binary, you are not female, you are not male, you are not normative. So then… you know what you are not but not what you are. It may be true that I am not binary, not female, not male. What I am is a human, no matter my feelings on such a matter. I am flesh and blood. I cry and laugh. I go to university; I play games and I write. That is what I am. I am not a gender.

If someone asked what non-binary meant, I know how I would respond: it is something between male and female, though not quite either. It would not be the truth. There is no singular definition ̶ only the one that people want to hear, or the one that makes the most sense to the unknowing. I am both more and less than what I am perceived to be. You look at my appearance and create a person that doesn’t exist. I stand in front of you, recognised, yet I am not seen. Perhaps I am already a ghost, and I just don’t realise it.

*

Everybody has a name⁠—it’s a constant of humanity. One of the first things you find out about someone is their name, and you expect these words to tell the truth of something that is so personal and intimate. In the end, the fact is that to some people their name isn’t personal. They were born into this world and assigned a label⁠—they were told ‘this is you and you are this,’ and they accepted it. Maybe they’ll never change it. Does this then mean I’m lying when I tell people my name?

To many, their first name is free of consequence[xiii]; you slowly assume the identity of your name[xiv] and it becomes your own. Theoretically. I despise my birth-given name. As a name it’s fine. It exists and on anyone else it would be fine. But it was never me. Now, because of one word, I feel as though I’ve lost something. Such is the power of a name. Until you have made the conscious choice to be your name, can it be called yours Especially when so many others have the exact same name, given to be a label so you aren’t a nameless face in the crowd?

The name you are given at birth is yours, but does it belong to you? When you think of yourself, do you describe your appearance? Your personality? Do you think of your name? Does it tell you anything about yourself? If it belongs to you, it must. If it doesn’t, then who are you? Some parents take it so personally when the child they named doesn’t like the word assigned to them. An affront to their person as though the child’s name belongs to them and not the child themself. A dog cannot change their name as they have no clue whether or not they have one, but a child is not a dog. They are born with about as much awareness of their name as a dog; the difference is that they grow and learn.

There is excitement in the ambivalence of a gender-neutral name. Tiresome, some may say. There’s power there. If people don’t know the gender of your name, they don’t know the gender of you. Some people don’t mind others knowing, yet they still aren’t happy with their names. Something more lyrical, more graceful, is what they’d prefer, yet they don’t change it. Why do you feel obligated to keep it and to whom? At one point, a name is simply a word. A label. Yet it is more than a word, more personal than a label. I have gone through many names, all meaning different things. They sound nice on others, so why wouldn’t they sound nice on me? Anna, Steve, Kate. Yet these never became me, only facets of who I would rather have been. A name possesses a life of its own[xvi], it is never solely you. It can only be partially you. When you have always been called one thing, been seen as one thing, change can be hard. I have gone by my new name for two years now, but I still find myself forgetting. I am not yet the name I’ve chosen; I will never be the name I was assigned.

When will my name become me?

• References

  [i]

  Gaston Bachelard, ‘the house. from cellar to garret. the significance of the hut,’ The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, trans. by Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 7

  [ii]
  Ibid.

  [iii]
  Liesbet Van Bulck, et al. “Illness Identity: Capturing the Influence of Illness on the Person’s Sense of Self.” European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, vol. 18 (2019), pp.4–6 <10.1177/1474515118811960>

  [iv]
  Stephanie Kılınç, Carol Campbell, et al. Epilepsy, Identity and the Experience of the Body, [accessed 8 December 2021] (para. 1)

  [v]
  Shigeki Morimoto and Shigeru Ohmori, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (2006), Nintendo DS.

  [vi]
  Toby Fox, Undertale (2015), Microsoft Windows and subsequently other platforms.

  [vii]
  Bonnie Ruberg, Straightwashing in Undertale: Video games and the limits of LGBTQ representation [accessed 24 November 2021]

  [viii]
  Toby Fox, Deltarune (2018), Microsoft Windows and subsequently other platforms.

  [ix]
  Casey Plett, ‘Rise of the Gender Novel’, The Walrus, (2015) [accessed 23 November 2021] (para. 6 of 17)

  [x]
  Ibid, (para. 1 of 17)

  [xi]
  Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane, ‘Introduction’, in Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, ed. by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), p. 15

  [xii]
  Ibid, p.18

  [xiii]
  Denise Riley, ‘Nine: Your Name Which Isn’t Yours’, Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p.115

  [xiv]
  Ibid, p.116.

  [xv]
  Ibid, p.118.

  [xvi]
  Ibid, p.121.