In a world of red and blue, I am purple.
It’s confusing to other people, yes, but it’s probably even more confusing to me.
People on the outside get the simple answers—
“I am nonbinary,”
“I am genderfluid,”
“I’m just me.”
I, on the inside, have to deal with all of the thoughts and feelings surrounding that.
There are days when I am purple, sure.
But there are days when I am colored magenta or indigo, red or blue,
and on confusing days I’m a tye-dye of hues.
On even more confusing days I feel gray overtake my being.
The days when I am red I question if my previous days or weeks or months were even real.
“Am I faking it?”
“Is purple even a real color?”
“What does it mean to be gray?”
It doesn’t help that on purple or blue or gray days, I fear the red.
I even fear the red on days when I am red.
I believe that is all people ever see of me, regardless of what color I actually am that day.
I know that how I look and the marker on my ID and my voice make me “red” in the eyes of the world, but it isn’t all that I am. I hate feeling that I have to tuck that part of myself away and reject anything associated with it just to be accepted as purple.
I know that it’s a struggle just to be me, both in the outside world and the little one I’ve made in my own mind.
In a world of red and blue, I am purple.
Sometimes I am red, sometimes I am blue, sometimes I am gray, sometimes I’m a mix of hues.
It’s confusing, yes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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