If you know me already, you know how I feel about the many flavors that gender comes in. If you don’t, you should know – I have a wide and varied palate. But!
Pineapple is my favorite.
What the hell is Marie talking about you may wonder, even if you do know me. Rest assured dear fellow explorer, I shall explain.
I’m currently in a bit of a heart strings riddled struggle. I love a person who is not bound by our binary system. One who is open and obvious with gender non-conformity. A wonderful person full of traits that one dreams about in a partner. And then I brought that wonderful fairy creature into the realm of my family.
My dad, an old fashioned soul, has a bit of difficulty with this. It alternates in how it affects him – angry, confused, puzzled, frustrated, confounded. It is not normal in his eyes, and not normal is scary, perhaps dangerous, and will perhaps make my life difficult. It pains me to see the fluctuation of discomfort, the wall put up when things don’t compute, the resistance to accepting. It is this conflict and desire to make my father like this wonderful person that pains me, that I struggle with. It cascades further in that I am secretly hurt and fearful of this non-acceptance…my father has known me all his life clearly, and his concept of me is that of His Little Girl. Yet, I am not that. I am not at one with the gender binary, I am not on the girls side of the schoolyard, I am not cisgendered. I am at once sad and afraid that if I tried to explain this that beyond his head imploding, I would be cast aside, unloved. It is a delicate topic, a powder keg of personal issues expressed outside of myself through other gods in my life, screwing with those damn cogs, again.
My brother, may the gods bless him, is a wonderful, welcoming, open soul in this respect. Are you happy, he asks me? Why yes, I am. Then I could care less if you love a pineapple, he says.
And that has become a loving joke among a few.
I’m a pretty awesome pineapple. I know some awesome pineapples, too.
What flavor are you?
Marie Alessandro - Gods in the Cogs 