Song Stories - Rearview

I finished going through the song stories of the Life To The Full EP, but there are still plenty more songs I've written, and many more stories to tell. Today, I'm talking about one of the most recent songs I've written - Rearview. As always, lyrics below for reference.

I've made mistakes I know

And there's times I wish I'd known better

But believe me I have grown

Yet you seem to think that you know better

And so I'm asking you why you're still stuck on the rearview

What you see ain't me, what I am's something new

Yet you still think you somehow know me better than I do

But you don't have a clue, cause you're stuck on the rearview

Yes, I haven't always looked like this

And I used to respond to he and his

But people change, and so have I

Yet you still call me dude and guy, let me ask why

Well, the rearview might be good for a smile

I'll look back there once or twice for a while

But that doesn't mean it defines who I am

We get to decide who we are, the future's unplanned

I wrote this one on guitar, and it started off with just a little motif that I was playing around with for a while. But then I also had this idea that I wanted to build a song around, and so I matched the two together.

Each verse kinda takes a different tack of what the situation might be. Perhaps you've changed because you made mistakes in the past, but you've learned from them. Or perhaps you've changed because of a realisation and deeper understanding about who you are. There are other things that could cause someone to change, of course, but these are the two that I focussed on, and I think they represent a fairly broad spectrum of experience. Pretty much everyone has mistakes that they've learned from; and though not everyone is a trans or non-binary person that was assigned male at birth (AMAB), many people have changed fundamentally in who they are over time. I had a bit of fun with the second verse, speaking more specifically to my own experience - my look hasn't changed too much (yet), at the moment I've just started regularly wearing skirts and that's about it for the most part. But I was also looking to the future, and when I might be performing this, when I wrote that first line. "I haven't always looked like this." Of course, I used to use he/him pronouns, so that's a direct call-out there. The reference to dude and guy in the last line is a personal bugbear of mine, where people frequently use both of those words in a gender-neutral way, but for me it feels very gendered. So that's just a reference to that.

But sometimes, other people don't keep up. For various reasons. Perhaps they haven't kept in touch, haven't seen you in a long time. Perhaps they took the mistake you made personally, and so try to keep reminding you of it. Perhaps they disagree with the changes that you've made to yourself, and the person that you've become. Whatever it might be; it's now like they're interacting with a past version of yourself, rather than the you that is now. They're stuck in the past. "And so I'm asking you why you're still stuck on the rearview." Sometimes, they can be quite insistent that who they're interacting with is the real you. "Yet you still think you somehow know me better than I do..." But they're not you. Nobody else gets to define who you are, if you don't want them to. Only you get to do that.

So what do we do with that? Well, sometimes you can catch people up. Sometimes people will get the memo, and realise they're kinda being shit, and change what they do. But sometimes people won't. And sometimes, that means the healthiest thing to do is leaving them behind - putting them in your rearview, since that's where they seem to insist on being. But that's up to you, as to what you do with the relationships in your life.

Of course, we don't just forget what's in the past. It still exists, and we can learn from it, and laugh at old memories, and all that sort of thing. But we don't live there any more. We live here, now. In the present. There's enough to deal with there!

I'm quite fond of this song. But I'm sure I'll write another before too long that I grow more fond of. It seems to be the way it all works! When I do, I'll put up another story about that one, I guess.

Too Many Questions...

I don't know what other people's experience is growing up in a Christian family, Christian school, and Christian church, was. To me, particularly looking back, there was a big emphasis on knowing all of the answers. "You need to always be ready to give an answer for the faith that you have!" There was an expectation that the people around us, all of these atheists and agnostics, would be pestering us with questions about why we believe, and these different issues with the Bible, or historical or scientific issues, or whatever it might be.

But that never really happened. Like, ever. And I was the sort of kid that was very good at knowing all of the right answers in Sunday school. I did all the prior reading (I loved reading so much), knew the proper answers to even deeper questions; but for starters, I was pretty much always in a Christian environment. There weren't really lots of these "atheists and agnostics" around. And if there were questions, they weren't things like, "how does the trinity work?" or, "where do dinosaurs fit into creation?" They were more things like, "why are Christians being shitty?" Why do Christians make life hard for queer people, or women who want abortions, or just women in general, or sex workers, or refugees, or people who aren't white, or who aren't interested in marriage, or who follow a different religion, or whatever might be the issue in your part of the world. 

Once upon a time, the hot issue was geocentrism. If you didn't believe that the Earth was the centre of the universe, as was clearly stated in the Bible, you were an enemy of the church. Thrown out. Excommunicated. You can even see disagreements like this in the New Testament itself; around issues like whether Gentiles could be Christians, circumcision, food sacrificed to idols, and more.

But we changed. We decided that the line of right and wrong that we had drawn in the sand was actually the thing that was wrong. But every time, it seems to have just moved to a different place. We always find a new group to exclude.

For a kid who knew all the "right" answers, I also had a lot of questions. I thought about things pretty deeply, and there kept being things that would come up that didn't make sense. I didn't like it when things didn't make sense. I remember going to the chaplain at school once, and asking about why God didn't seem to follow the same rules that he had set for us. The answer basically came down to - because God is God, not us. There was a bit more discussion than that, but that's what it seemed to boil down to. But it still didn't make sense to me.

As I grew up, I was able to answer some questions. But many more surfaced. Things that didn't make sense with what I knew of God, and what I knew from the Bible. While some of it was about deep or complicated theological stuff; much more of it was those same questions other people were asking. Why are we being shitty to people? Why, when we claim to follow and be trying to act like a God who is love, are we being unloving towards people?

And I know that so many Christians say that they are being loving. Spoiler alert: when what you're doing causes trauma, self-harm, suicide, abuse, racism, sexism, and more besides - that's not love. And if all sin is the same; why aren't we trying to correct and change people that lie? Or who are greedy with money? Or who are violent towards other people? The church doesn't seem to have an equal stance on these things, despite saying that all sin is the same in the eyes of God. Perhaps because the problem is that these are harder to deal with. These are harder to draw a line around. They go into the too-hard basket. It's much easier to slap a label on someone that's queer, than to slap a label on someone who's a liar. Or greedy. Or violent. And maybe that might mean looking internally, rather than externally, God forbid!

The thing is, though, that sins are not all the same. Oh, they're the same to God, don't get me wrong. There's sin and there's not sin. But there's a big difference for people here on earth. If I call someone a bad name, that's not going to have the same affect for people as abusing them repeatedly will.

Sin is about broken relationships. Broken relationships with each other, with ourselves, with God. The church tends to focus a lot on that last one, basically ignore the middle one, and only worry about the first if it's about relationships between Christians. But the church really has a massive problem with broken relationships with so many people, so many groups, that they have cast aside and denied entry or not cared for in so many different ways.

I hope that this will change. It feels like, slowly, it might be starting to. We're starting, slowly, to see more acceptance for female leadership in places it hasn't been before (feels like such an old battle, but it's still being fought in some places); in others, seeing acceptance of same-sex marriages, or transgender people. There are still so many things that are broken, and so many people that are hurting and that have left the church completely because of what it has done. But I think, bit by bit, we're starting to see fragments of a future church where questions are welcome. Where we're less sure on where the lines are, and who is "in" or "out". Where we just welcome people in as they are. You know, like Jesus did? Strange idea, I know. But just maybe.

The intersection of trans and non-binary

This week is Trans Awareness Week. So I thought that I would do a post talking about what being trans means, and how that intersects with being non-binary.

Transgender is defined as identifying with a different gender than what you were assigned at birth. 

At the moment, around the world, gender is assigned at birth; the vast majority of the time, as only male or female, though there are instances where this may not be the case (which is where we get into intersex, but that's a different issue). But many people, as they grow older, for many and varied reasons, may not identify with this assigned gender. And so they choose to identify with a different gender. For some people, this may be a change from male to female, or female to male; this is probably what is most well-known. But there are also many people that will change to non-binary, or genderqueer, or agender, or any of many other identifiers. Perhaps this will change multiple times over their life, or be fluid and changing day-to-day. And all of these are valid experiences.

The counterpoint to transgender, by the way, is cisgender, or cis, where someone identifies with the same gender that they were assigned at birth. 

As a non-binary person who was assigned male at birth, I also fall under what's often referred to as "the trans umbrella". It's called that because it includes many different gender identities, in the same way that non-binary does. I don't really tend to say "I'm trans" that often, though, I usually instead say "I'm non-binary", even though both are correct. But non-binary is more specific, and when the general populace think of trans, they usually think of binary trans - which I'm not; or someone who is transitioning with hormones or surgery, which I'm also not. And yes, there is value in educating people (which is part of the reason I'm writing this), but I don't want to do that in every interaction. Saying non-binary is a simpler shorthand.

There are non-binary people that choose not to use the trans label for themselves for other reasons, or that do choose to use it - I encourage you to ask people why they use the labels they do, but also keep in mind that nobody owes you an explanation. If people are happy to share, then great. But people might not be, and that's okay too. Not everyone has the energy to talk about these things.

I have the good fortune to now know a good number of trans people; both binary, and non-binary. All of them are rather beautiful and amazing. But we all also have many obstacles in this world that cis people don't. Some of those are starting to come down, thankfully; but we still have a ways to go yet.

And so I encourage you - listen to the trans people around you. Hear what they are finding difficult and struggling with. Be aware, and be active. Because trans rights don't just help trans people. They help everyone. 

Song Stories: Jesus Christ

This is the final song, and the final song story, from the Life To The Full EP that I've been working through over the past while. This one has a bit less depth to it, but that's okay. Lyrics are below.

I want to go where I am free
I want to go, will you take me?
I want to leave, just leave this place
I want to find, find my own space

And I have found, a way to live
Yes I have found a life to give
It teaches me a better way
Yeah, teaches me, each night and day

The one who gives me life?
Jesus Christ

And I have said, said many times
And I have read between the lines
Cause what you give is life to me
Yes what you give it sets me free

You're the one, oh yeah
And I know, this isn't fair
But still, you came for me
And died, upon that tree

You're the one who gives me life
Yes, you're the one who gives me life
You're the one who gives me life
Jesus Christ

This is another one that I through-composed, on the guitar. I was basically noodling around and found this chord progression that I enjoyed, then started just riffing on it with words while I played. This is the song that came out of it.

Lyrically - I feel like this song is coming back to some of the core of what I believe. Because there are a lot of bits that I've deconstructed and reconstructed over the last months and years, and plenty that's still just uncertain. But what I do know is the freedom and life that I've found within Jesus - and that's the same freedom and life I live now. "I want to go where I am free...I want to find, find my own space" 

I think it's this "better way" that I mention in there that some Christians can get hung up on, though. Because the way they see it is - we're living a better way than them. When it feels much more true to actually put it like - I'm living a better way than how I used to live. Because each person's life is different, and unique, and complex. You can't really compare them to another, to call one "better" or "worse". How are you measuring that? How are you quantifying that? But you can compare your experience now to your previous experience; though even that has many limits and ifs or buts. But I do feel like, through Jesus, I am living a better life. And that's something I'm always learning.

Do I think that's something that everyone needs? Well, here's the thing. You see, Jesus has already made my life better. But through me, I also believe he's made the lives of those around me better too. And you can say the same through history - to the point where I feel like all lives have already been made better through Jesus. If Jesus hadn't come, we would be living in a worse world, and not have the same depth and quality of life, of freedom, that we do today.

But that doesn't mean I need to be shouting on the street corners about who Jesus is, and telling people to "ask him into their hearts", and the like. Other people do that, and they feel like they're making a difference, and I'm happy for them. For now, I'm happy to just try and follow his ways in my life, and see that love spill over into the lives of people around me.

That's all of the song stories for the Life Is Full EP. I hope you've enjoyed those. I don't think I'm done with song stories, though - I'll still be coming back to them now and then. It's a useful format that I can always find some words for, and it keeps me writing, which is good.

Being Non-Binary.

A little while back, I did a post about multi-gender attraction, and what that looks like for me. Today, I thought I'd take a look at being non-binary, and what that looks like. Which means that it's time to talk about gender!

When we're talking about gender, we're actually often talking about two different things in one; gender identity, and gender expression. Gender identity is your innate sense of what your gender is, on a psychological and internal level, however you kinda want to define that. It's how you see and understand yourself internally and what you identify with personally. Gender expression is how you choose to show and demonstrate that externally, through things like dress, behaviour, speech, and the like. It's what you want other people to see, or how you're choosing to act in a given moment.

People might then go, hey! What about body stuff? Well, bodies are something else again. That's what's referred to as biological sex; things like what chromosomes you might have, what genitals you have, etc. And even here, things are a fair bit more nuanced than the binary people are used to. Depending on where you look, there are some estimates that close to 2% of people are intersex; close to the number of people who have naturally red hair. It's not as uncommon as you'd think.

If you're not familiar with it yet, I do recommend the Genderbread website as a handy tool and explainer around these issues for those that are finding it a bit difficult. They do a decent job at breaking it all down.

For myself; gender identity is something that I find very difficult to pin down. My gender feels very difficult to define or contain or explain in any tangible sense; it feels rather amorphous. Part of this is probably simply because gender is somewhat of a social construct, and being neurodivergent, I don't deal with empty constructs that well. So I find it really hard to say if I'm more "male" or more "female", or both, or neither, or something else entirely. I don't feel like my gender identity is something that moves around or changes on a regular basis, so I don't think something like genderfluid or genderflux resonates with me; and at the moment, at least, I don't think that it's absent, so I don't think that agender quite fits either. So, insofar, I've just been using the broader term of non-binary, since it encompasses everything that isn't solely male or female. And I think this is an understanding that I've had on some level most of my life, just without the language for it.

Gender expression, though, is a little different. I think I could describe my desired gender expression as - eccentric? I've had a somewhat masc gender expression most of my life (though still with some hefty doses of femme), and I'm now skewing that more towards femme. I'm wearing skirts, trying dresses, growing my hair out longer; I'm pretty comfortable in my body (thankfully), so at the moment I don't have plans to try hormones, and I'm not thinking about doing surgery or anything like that. There are a few other things that I'm still thinking about - I've been inside for a fair while because of lockdown, so I've only been "expressing" my gender to the few people that I'm living with xD So I'm still exploring and figuring out what that will look like.

Other things I'm not so much making femme, but moving away from masc. I'm using they/them pronouns now and quite enjoying them; with some groups and people I've also started to use Bren rather than Brendan, though I'll probably still use the latter for formal documents and the like for a while yet. I'm not changing because I have dysphoria around the name Brendan (I quite like my name!), but because I like having a gender-neutral version of it. People see Brendan and think male, whereas people see Bren and don't immediately know what gender that is associated with.

I'll also note, that as a non-binary person - I'm not a man, and neither am I a woman. I'm not a boy, or a girl. I'm not a bro, or a sis, or a dude, or a guy, or a sheila. I'm not a sir or a ma'am, a Mr or a Mrs or a Ms. Now, it's not so much that these terms being used for me would cause dysphoria - it's just that they're not me. They're not inclusive of who I am. It's like if you said to a room filled with people from different backgrounds, "Hey white people!" It just doesn't make sense. It's not including a bunch of people that are there. If you have other people in your life that are non-binary or trans, particularly family or someone you're in relationship with, I'd really encourage you to talk with them about what language they enjoy being used for them. Because it's not just about not using language we don't like - it's also about using language that we do like. For me, a big part of that is when people use Bren and they/them for me. Other things are when people use compliments that are more typically femme; like calling me beautiful, pretty, or gorgeous - those are words I really enjoy.

Non-binary is a big umbrella, and I'm just one person standing under it somewhere. I've shared my experience here, but there are a lot of other people that use this identity too, and in different ways. I'd encourage you, again, to talk to these people in your life about what it means and looks like for them, and put in the extra mile to get that language right. Maybe that means using a different name; maybe it means using they/them, or even neopronouns! Maybe it means changing what compliments or other terms you use. If they're someone that you care about and want to build or maintain relationship with, take the time. It really helps.

If you've taken the time to read this - thank you. Hopefully it explains where I'm at at the moment in regards to gender a little bit better. As always; this is something where my understanding could change with time. But this gives you a snapshot of where I'm at now.