By

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If days at the park are supposed to be laid back and fun, I was not in the right place. I was roughly 11 and a half, hated wearing girls clothing (but not always), and preferred jumping off of the tree above the lake at the campground more than going to get a mani-pedi with friends. I was wandering the paths in the garden section of the park when a man, his wife, and his two sons approached me. The man asked if I could take his family picture, since the photographer was running late. I said yes to him, and they went to stand by a cherry tree. The two boys were being obnoxious, and the man said to them, "kids, come on. Look at the nice boy over there!" That's what started it. The subtle, subconscious questioning of my gender. After a year or so, another incident reminiscent of the first, and a wardrobe change as I found my home among the fandoms, it became clear to me that I wasn't only a girl, but a boy as well. And even later than that, just this year to be exact, I had found that I wasn't just a girl and a boy, but both, and, in some circumstances, I wasn't either of them. Online, I researched what I knew was going on about me at the moment, and it came up with a ton of images of colorful, eye catching flags. "Pride Flags of the LGBTQ community" said one picture with at least 30 flags. I then found one with a strange (at the time) color scheming that stood out to me. "This banner," as said on Wikipedia, "is the flag of pride for people who are genderfluid" I searched that up. The first result is the one that changed everything. "If you are genderfluid, your gender can change at any time depending on current happenings. Genderfluid people can feel like a girl, a boy, both, or neither at any time.

I thought to myself, "This is it. This is me."