3:46am July 8, 2014

They gave me a handful of keys.

And they told me to explore all the houses on the street. There were tall houses, short houses, large houses, small houses, apartments, shacks, mansions, huts, and everything in between. I went through the front doors. I went through the back. I crawled in through the windows. I knocked and waited for an answer. But no matter what house I came upon, they shook their heads and turned me away. Sometimes there was hospitality first. Sometimes just a lingering sadness in their eyes. They told me I could be welcome, but that I couldn’t stay. And I didn’t understand how those two things could happen at the same time. I wandered the street till I came to the woods. Someone had left their cabin unlocked. And when I got inside, all my things were there, and my cat rushed up to greet me with a flurry of worried meows.

Each of these houses was a gender, you see. And there are dozens, maybe hundreds of those – easily. Every time I was rejected it was with the utmost sadness, for everyone there knew what it’s like to be an outcast. Yet they couldn’t take me in for the sake of pretence. I could dine at their tables, but not sleep in their beds. That would be a binding contract saying I belonged, and I didn’t belong. No matter what gender I found, no matter how unique or interesting it seemed, I still didn’t belong.

But my cabin in the redwoods was perfect, in a way nothing could have prepared me for. The air was clear. All the other houses had murky air, because I have no gender, and gender is murky to me. My cabin was full of clarity. Because this was where I belonged, more than anywhere in the world.

And I found paths through the woods where I could explore by myself. And other cabins inhabited by other genderless folks.

And I could breathe again. That musty feeling I got when gender was pressing in all around me, it was gone. I wondered what it would be like for gender to be natural, to breathe easy in one of those murky-smelling houses. To perhaps see my own house as the place where you couldn’t breathe right. My own hospitality as nice but not enough for you, having to go on searching until you find the right one.

Then I caught myself realizing that most people don’t even need to go on searching. They’re born into one of the two biggest houses: Male, and female. Like me, they’re raised in those houses. Unlike me, they don’t run off and go exploring at the earliest age possible. Unlike me, they don’t wonder when the house for them will appear. When they will get the key to the place they will feel at home. Whether such a key exists, whether such a place exists, whether it’s just a pipe dream.

Personally, I was born into the female house, but by the time I was seven i knew something was wrong. I would’ve probably known earlier if developmental delays hadn’t prevented my developing a solid perception of gender until such a late age. As I grew up, I tried the key to the male house, thinking it was the only other option. It fit, in some ways, it almost fit, but then I realized it was just as wrong as the female house. I slunk back to the female house with my tail between my legs, wondering what was wrong with me. Secretly, I snuck out and tried every house I could think of, big or small, rich or poor, whether I had the key or had to find another way in, and nothing.

Nothing until I realized what I was looking for was probably not on the map. Not even the nonbinary maps I’d been finding and reading, looking for somewhere familiar. And I went off into the woods, and found a beautiful cabin furnished with all my things and my cat to greet me, and I cried, and only then did I realize this was a genderless cabin. A place for people with no gender at all. My search had been wrong all those years because I had been looking for something I didn’t have.

At first I didn’t call myself genderless. I called myself nongendered. It mirrored transgendered and cisgendered. Later, I heard people using words like agender and neutrois. And I settled eventually on genderless. Genderless felt like the most natural-sounding of all of these words, for the English language anyway. It rolls off the tongue easily, doesn’t feel cobbled together out of pieces of other words, doesn’t sound like it comes from a foreign language. So genderless it is, for me, even though agender and neutrois seem to be the terms of choice in the trans community.

I am so glad I found that cabin in the woods. And I am sure that for each person seeking out a gender, there is either one house, or multiple houses (especially for those who are genderfluid), that will fit them, whether they have a gender or not, or something in between. And you won’t know it until you see it, but when you do see it, it will be amazing. It will be like coming up for air after swimming underwater for too long. Like taking a long cold drink on a hot day. Like almost, almost feeling comfortable in your own skin. All that and more.

And when you find what is right for you? Really find it? No matter what it is? Don’t let anyone take it away from you. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re just trying to be special. Don’t let anyone set up criteria for whether you are really this gender (or lack thereof), and then judge you by them and find you lacking. If something is right for you, truly right for you, you will know, and it is none of their business. You don’t even have to tell anyone if you don’t want. Sometimes self-knowledge is enough. And if anyone gives you trouble, recite this to yourself: I’m okay, you’re mean. It will help you remember where things really stand, that you are not the problem here, the problem is someone else being mean to you. And that’s what it is to try to take away someone else’s gender identity because it doesn’t meet with your illustrious stamp of approval – mean, not to mention elitist and arrogant.

Anyway, here’s to everyone who has found the key to their house, and everyone who is still looking. Not everyone has a gender. I don’t. Not every gender has a word for it yet. But I’m certain that everyone has a place where, eventually, they can discover their gender(s), or lack thereof. And that self-discovery? That’s just the beginning.