Some Of My Story.

It's been...a while. I really haven't been good at writing anything on here for some time now. But over the past little bit I've realised that I've got a fair few new people in my life now who don't really know my story. So I thought I might have a go at summing it up here. 

Obviously, this won't cover everything. I'm not really talking about most of my life really before COVID except as background. Also a lot of this I did as a Fringe show, with my own songs! So if you'd prefer that format (though it will be a bit different, it's a few years old now) here's the link.

I grew up in a Christian family. Both parents Christian and from Christian families as well. Went to church every week, went to a Christian high school, had some jobs in prominent Australian Christian organisations. Even went to Bible college for a year (it was this sort of young adults leadership/spiritual growth/Bible college course with just a small group), and ended up working leading the music at a church (as it happened, just down the road from the high school I'd been at). I was down the rabbit hole pretty deep, in many respects. 

At the same time, though, I was still quite left-leaning. I'd grown up in a church that had women leading up the front, I was pro-choice, rather anti-capitalist, thought that guns and war were terrible ideas, and tended to follow science and history a fair bit. But also - I still thought that I was straight, monogamous, and a cisgender man. Though I didn't know the word cisgender at the time 😂 That was all about to change, though. 

Perhaps strangely, the way that it changed was getting married. Yes, for those of you that didn't know, once upon a time I was married. You see, I knew I wanted romantic relationship, I was very much a romantic. And the system and context that I grew up in said that the only okay way to do that was with heterosexual monogamous marriage; so that's what I pursued. With a fair few bumps and wrong turns along the way (thanks autism), but we eventually got there in the end. I ended up getting married early in the year of 2020. 

Something else happened that year! 😅 We managed to get our honeymoon in before lockdown happened, but then all of a sudden we had a lot of time to ourselves. I don't know about you, but for me, that led to a lot of introspection. And I'm already a fairly introspective person by nature.

You see, at some point a while before this, I'd had this thought of, "if I'd grown up in a different family that wasn't Christian, I'd probably be a trans woman at this point." And this was quite a common thought I had, that I didn't really think much about - I kinda just accepted it as a fact, thought there's nothing much I can do with that, and put it on the shelf for another time. (To provide a little context, part of the reason that was a thought I was having was because I really didn't associate with a lot of things considered traditionally masculine, and often tried to actively move away from those.) But then, come lockdown, and all that introspective time - my brain thought it was a great time to bring that thought off the shelf again and have a closer look at it. And that was the start of rather a lot happening. 

Because you see, that was kinda like opening the lid to Pandora's box. As soon as I started looking at my sexuality and gender more closely, all my preconceived notions basically fell apart. And after a bit of Googling, I relatively quickly figured out that I was non-binary, pansexual, and polyamorous. ....as you can imagine, that was a lot for me to take in all at once. It also wasn't as surprising as perhaps it should have been. (Of course there were signs. I was just blinkered.)

But this then posed rather a few problems. The first one was just theological - everything I'd believed up to this point said that this wasn't really okay. And so I did some more digging, and some more research. After a bit of time, I'd basically resolved those qualms - though also more of my preconceived notions around religion and spirituality were being rocked, and deconstruction was kinda happening all at once now. 

The next problems were, I was still married. And working at a church. So this is where I had a choice. I could try to ignore what I'd learned, and just keep living life how I was. I was in a good relationship, I had a job I enjoyed - and even though the church I was at had a lot of people with different views to me, there were still a lot of people there that I cared about and enjoyed spending time with. And I tried to make that work for a little while. I told my wife at the time about the things that I'd learned about myself, talked through it all. She accepted me for who I was, but also affirmed that we'd committed to a monogamous relationship, and that's not something she was comfortable with sacrificing (which was understandable).

So I tried to accept that, for a time, and live mostly how I had been. I'd started connecting with some queer communities online and talking with people there, but I wasn't talking about it with other people I knew personally. After a couple of months like this - I knew I couldn't keep going this way. It felt like living a lie. It felt like I wasn't able to be truly myself. But I also knew that if I did take that step, it would mean losing a lot - my marriage, my job at the church (thankfully I did have another job, but still), many friends, and possibly family as well. Was that worth it?

To me, it was. And so started a rollercoaster of my life for the next few months.

First, was another conversation with my wife at the time. Understandably, she was rather upset, and didn't want to separate. But also wasn't willing to compromise on her own beliefs (and I wasn't asking her to). So I gave her some time. It ended up being a few more months before we separated. Before it happened, I started slowly talking to each of my immediate family about what was happening, and then to my pastor at the time. The conversations were difficult, though not all as hard as they might have been. And then I moved out, and away.

It wasn't too long after that when I came out online, publicly. While there were certainly plenty that were shocked or concerned, there were also many that were encouraging, or that were really happy that I'd come out. I started to have people come out of the weeds that I hadn't talked to in ages, and it turned out they were queer as well! I just hadn't known. And in the years since it's been wild how many friends I've seen come out or transition, often people that I'd been very close to before. What do they say about birds of a feather? 

I started living more authentically as myself, but a lot of things took me some time to figure out. I found an affirming church fairly quickly, and then another one not too long after that which felt more at home to me. I started wearing more skirts and dresses, and after a time growing out my hair. I started trying they/them pronouns, and more recently both they/them and she/her. I tried using a gender-neutral version of my old name for a while, before finding my first name, and then the full name I use now. I found a lot more queer friends and communities to connect with, both online and in person. I felt more....me.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been issues. The road with my family has been bumpy, but they're learning, and trying to be better. I ended up finishing up with that church I was at, partly because of my own deconstruction journey, but partly because of how the church changed as well. I've dealt with more depression and burnout over the past few years than I think I have in the rest of my life. And being a transfemme person that still has a flat chest and stubble a lot of the time, I get misgendered a lot. But has it been worth it? Hell yes. And I will take living authentically every time, even when the cost is high. 

This isn't the end of my story, and neither is it all of my story. But hopefully, having this part of it here like this can be helpful for people to understand me better. And also just as a reminder to myself now and then, of how far I've come. It's been quite the journey. And if you've been a part of helping me get here - thank you. You're part of the reason that I stick around.