And I Still Don’t Know What to Wear for My Wedding

Planning a wedding is everything everyone says it is. Honestly, it’s really lived up to my expectations so far. It is stressful and fun and hard to navigate and exciting and tedious, all at the same time, but mostly, it’s overwhelming. I’m beyond grateful that Ian is my partner in all this, because I couldn’t do this without him (and not just because he’s willing to join wedding Facebook groups and I’m not). 

But something I didn’t expect is the absolute terror I felt the first time someone asked me about wedding dress shopping. It crept up on me with cold sweat and goosebumps, my stomach dropping and my heartbeat speeding. Dear God, I did not want to go wedding dress shopping. I did not want to wear a wedding dress. I did not (and do not) want to walk down the aisle done up like a princess. I do not want to be trapped in every girl’s dream. 

Because the truth is that I have never been, nor will I ever be, a girl. 

Let me explain. 

I have written at least five versions of this post, trying to find a way to say this that makes sense to others. I’ve tried writing about belonging, trying to channel that feeling you get when you’re together with your best friends in the world, the kind of people about whom you’d say, “Well, they’re not blood, but they’re kin.” I’ve tried writing about discovering yourself, those moments when you try on a pair of pants or a hat that fits just right, or when you try out something for the first time and you can tell that this is what you were made to do, and something true about you just clicks. I even tried writing a skit about it, trying to show that even though I use they/them pronouns, I’m still a normal living, breathing, bleeding person. I’ve tried all sorts of angles, all sorts of examples, and nothing’s worked. 

So let’s just get into it. Let’s just deal with the thing. I’m not a girl. Or a woman. Or a lady. I wasn’t these things even when I was of the right age to be these things. I’m just not that. 

But I’m also not a boy or a man or properly a gentleman. When I talk to trans friends and trans folks in my life about what it’s like to be trans, my experience is not the same as theirs. I don’t have any innate sense that I’m a man. I haven’t known since I was a child that the gender everyone else sees me as is the opposite of the gender I know I am. I wasn’t a little cheerleader with crinkled hair hating it because I was really a boy on the inside. I wasn’t a tomboy because I wished I was an actual boy. That’s not it for me. 

But always, for all of my life, I’ve always just thought of me as me. The question, “Are you male or female?” doesn’t make sense to me, not really. I mean, I get it. I understand that the question is asking, in the most simple way, “Do you have a penis or do you have a vagina?”. That’s the world the question lives in. “Can you carry a baby or not?” “Do you pee in a urinal?” Or, in the Title IX kind of way, “Have you been excluded from certain sports in recent history?” 

But when I think of myself, when I picture myself in my head, I don’t see myself as male or female. I’ve got a vagina, sure. I’ve got boobs. I’ve got a uterus that could, in theory, carry a baby. But despite all that, I’m not a woman. I’m not female. That’s just stuff my body has, like elbows and eyebrows and earlobes. It doesn’t say anything about me. 

And I used to think that everybody thought that way about themselves. I thought that everyone in their head was genderless. I thought that everyone more or less tolerated the sexual organs they were born with, and resented their secondary sexual characteristics, and secretly just wanted to wear what they wanted to wear. I thought that everyone was uncomfortable in their body, or just didn’t think about their body much. I thought everyone just kinda wished they didn’t have a gender at all. I thought we all sang along to “Be A Man” in Mulan and delighted at the freedom to be who we wanted to be. I thought we all felt the same secret triumph when Jo March cut off her hair. 

Then people around me, people I knew, friends, people like me, started coming out as non-binary. I watched them and supported them and learned from them what being non-binary could look like. I read posts from Elle Dowd, with their red lipstick and heels, about being non-binary. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the screen when Janet in The Good Place explained that she was not a girl. I slowly let myself wonder whether or not I was like them. 

Funnily enough, the thing that did it for me was talking to people about their gender and realizing that some people do actually like their gender. They do feel like they’re a man or a woman. It’s an important part of who they are and how they move through the world. Sure, they had the usual complaints that came along with being a woman or a man, but overall, they felt like it fit. When I asked people, “Do you like being a man/woman?”, most often, the answer I got was, “I’ve never really thought about it, but yes.” 

And I know questions like this don’t really make sense. I know that most people don’t think to ask these questions. I know this is outside of most everyone’s experience. I know this is weird. I know this is unusual. 

I know. 

But I also know that I’m not a girl. 

I don’t have to be a girl. 

And I’d keep this to myself, really I would, except that one of the best days of my life was the day I first told someone I thought I was non-binary, and they said, “Of course you are.” The years, the decades, of feeling not-quite-right, of not belonging in myself, of being wrong in some inexplicable way, melted away. I’m not bad at being a woman. I wasn’t meant to be a man. I’m something else entirely, something different and unknown and spectacular, something all my own. 

I wish everyone in the world could feel that kind of relief. 

I wish everyone in the world could feel so seen, and understood, in the best possible way. 

I wish the puzzle pieces could fall into place for each of us the way they fell into place for me when I claimed being non-binary for myself. 

And once you know that, once you’ve experienced who you really are, it’s so, so hard to go back to being what you were. You realize how much energy went into pretending to be something that you’re not, and you just don’t have that energy to give anymore. I can’t squeeze myself back into femininity. I can’t mold myself back into one-dimensional sisterhood. I can’t wedge myself into an oversized white ball gown with thick straps, a sweetheart neckline, and cathedral veil and be paraded down the aisle. I can no more switch back to she/her pronouns than a rehabilitated bird can be put back in a cage. And that’s dramatic, I know, but so is this change. I like myself in a way that I never have before. When someone uses they/them pronouns for me, it’s like hearing someone say my name for the first time. It’s like belonging in my body for the first time, ever.

I’m not a girl. And I’m so happy about that. 

And this doesn’t mean that we all got it wrong! This doesn’t mean that I’m angry and resentful! (I mean, I am, but about other stuff. Not about this.) I don’t think anyone in my life had good words to explain what I was feeling for most of my life, and that’s okay. And this doesn’t mean I’m going to swear off dresses and pink any more than I already have. I have, in my own way, developed a style that I like, that fits me. I don’t want to change anything about myself, not really. I just want the person I am on the inside to also be the person I am on the outside. 

And I don’t have the perfect words for it all yet. I am and will always be my parents’ eldest daughter, because that is a title I have earned. I will, one day, be a daughter-in-law, because that’s important to my future mother-in-law. I think I’ll be a mother, one day, or a mama, because I think that’s the way I know how to be a parent. And I guess I’m a bride? I don’t know a better word for it. I’m the one who’s getting married who’s not Ian. But I will be all these things and do all these things in my own non-binary way, because now I’m free to. I can figure out how to be myself in all these different roles, no matter the label, because I now know who I am. 

And I still don’t know what to wear for my wedding. 

But I’m sure it’ll be spectacular. I’m sure it’ll be mine.