In-betweens & Outliers

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

May 6th, 1993

I’m born, the first of four. Some people say they remember their birth. I do not. All I know is what my mom told me: that I was a beautiful baby boy who she loved all the way to the moon and back.

A brown-eyed boy — that’s what ended up on my birth certificate, the first permanent record of anyone telling me who to be.

Today I am decidedly not a boy, but I am still beautiful. This is my story.

2nd Grade

My only elementary school teacher whose name I don’t remember sits next to me as I practice writing the alphabet in cursive. Up until today, I have written with my right hand. Today I try writing with my left.

She notices me shakily looping letters together.

“Why are you using your left hand? You’re right-handed.”

“I wanted to try my left.”

“But you’re right-handed. It’ll be easier with your dominant hand. Watch.”

She grabs a pencil with her right hand and writes the perfect cursive of an elementary school teacher. She then attempts with her left. The difference is clear.

I spend the next week forced to write with my right hand at school, making no progress. But at home, I secretly do all of my homework with my left hand. The more I practice with my left, the more natural it feels.

The following week, my teacher returns my homework and remarks that my handwriting has significantly improved. Tears fill my eyes as I tell her that I cheated and used my left hand.

After that, I’m allowed to write with my left hand. I spent a lot of time thinking about how weird it was that we were only taught to use one hand and that no one else tried to learn both.

Years later I would find out that I’m ambidextrous.

5th grade

I ask my Dad what the kids at school mean when they ask, “What are you?”

“What do you mean?”, he asks in that Dad tone straddling discerning and unfazed.

I explain how they told me I didn’t look white, black, nor anything else. I tell him that they said I was weird looking. I ask, “Aren’t we white?”, not knowing what “white” even was.

I remember his raised eyebrow, the way he set his coffee down, the near-patented look of my dad puzzling words together in his head. He explains to me what “white” is, as best as you can to a 5th grader, and that I am, in fact, not.

“Well, your mom is white, but I’m not. Neither are you kids.”

My dad’s dad was African-American, and his mom is Native-American (Creek). He explained our shared ancestry to me, though I did not grasp it.

This ended up being one of those things he assured me I would “understand” when I’m older. In retrospect, the remarkable part is that I never thought my dad looked like anything. It never crossed my mind. He was simply Dad, and my mom was Mom.

I wrote this down on a secret list I kept for “things I would understand later”, a list that I, unfortunately, would lose before adulthood.

I remember the years following where I responded “other” to the kids at my southern, predominately white public school who would ask what I “was”. I wish I had found the words and the conviction to tell them who I was. Some of them thought it was neat. Most of them bullied me for being weird. At the time, I attributed this to the fact that I was weird, instead of that I looked different.

8th Grade

The entire grade took a test where we had to submit demographics. I remember nothing about the test, except the last page where we had to check a box indicating our race.

I’d seen these before. Normally I just put “other”. This one had a box with a word I’d never seen before.

Multiracial.

It was a vague catch-all, yet it resonated with me. It wrapped my uncertainty about who I was into a word. I liked words that did this — like ambidextrous.

I checked that box and was reborn.

High School

As I grew into my features, fewer people noticed. I either passed as white or people got less comfortable asking.

I rolled with off-white.

By the time I entered high school, I don’t even know if my friends knew my ancestry. I didn’t think about it, and I spoke of it even less. They knew I wasn’t white because they knew my dad, and that was it.

What I do remember are the jokes.

“Devon, you little Mexican, help me with my Spanish!”

“The only reason you’re good at math is because you’re part Asian.”

“Can you even see out of those eyes when you laugh?”

“Devon get your inside-out Oreo ass over here.”

I wouldn’t confront them about it. Truth be told, I laughed along with them. This was a southern public school in 2007–2011. Racist jokes were in.

At the time, I didn’t even know they were racist. It would be years before I confronted my own internalized racism, and longer before I would’ve called these microaggressions.

I knew about racism, but because I saw myself as white-passing, I didn’t think I could be receiving it. Honestly, I think I just wanted to fit in, be a normal high schooler. I tucked my discomfort away and didn’t think about it.

This was a mistake.

12th Grade

Deadmau5’s Strobe blasts in my headphones as I tear open a letter marked Oberlin College in an eloquent typeface. I’m accepted into Oberlin’s Class of 2015.

I bounce off the walls. All of the hard work I put in, despite (or even to spite) my parents separating my freshman year of high school, materializes in this acceptance letter. After almost failing my freshman year and scrounging together a whopping 3.5 GPA, I got into one of the most prestigious liberal arts schools in the country. I did it.

I read through the letter again and notice there’s an extra pamphlet. It turns out, I’ve also received an invitation to visit the college early for an all-expense-paid trip as part of their “Multicultural Visit Program”.

At first, I am elated, as I would never be able to afford a visit otherwise, but then that’s replaced by distrust.

First, distrust in the offer: was I accepted as a statistic? Do I owe my acceptance to heritage instead of merit?

And then distrust in me: I got an invitation to the Multicultural Visit Program. Why me? I’m a white-passing, suburbia-grown, southern kid. I felt like I barely even had one culture, and the ones I wish I knew, I never found.

I thought there must be someone else who deserves this more. I couldn’t possibly be “multi” enough, effectively gatekeeping myself from my own identity.

Battling uncertainty, I end up going on the trip. I’m accompanied by my best friend, Emma, who also got into Oberlin, and decided we might as well visit together. On arrival, I am welcomed into the loving arms of the multicultural center at Oberlin. Oberlin is simultaneously not quite what I imagined and more than I could have ever dreamed of. I stay in Afrikan Heritage house (A-House) for the first night of my weekend visit, and the people there blow me away. My host and his friends take me under their wing. We spend the night shooting the shit, playing Super Smash Bros., and discussing the best and worst parts of Oberlin.

For the first time in my life, except for rare gatherings with my dad’s side of the family, I feel accepted into a black community.

First Year, Oberlin College

My initial acceptance does not last.

I never quite find my way back to the black community at Oberlin. When I try, I never feel like I belong. There are fleeting moments, but nothing like that night as a prospective student. The racial impostor syndrome that had been simmering my entire life is now on full boil.

I find a home in the co-ops at Oberlin instead, specifically Harkness co-op. People at Oberlin joke that “Harkness is to Oberlin as Oberlin is to the rest of the world.” In other words, it’s the place where the others and the weird come together to shine. Harkness felt safer than anywhere else at Oberlin, which is ironic considering the rest of Oberlin gossiped how “unsafe” it was.

I’m fortunate to find a few multiracial friends, though we rarely talk about it. I regret not having those conversations more often. However, I am content.

Content like I was content in high school, constrained by the desire to fit instead of remembering that “fit” has always been something that I’ve had to make for myself.

Senior Year, Oberlin College

I’m in full senior year stride, enjoying a drink with a few friends at the only bar in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio. One drink turns into two, three, more. I get sloppy drunk, feeling invincible in my senior glow.

I remember little from that night, but I’ll never forget the mistake I made.

There was the blurry walk home. There was the vomit. There was the anxious, crushing feeling that hit between vomiting and falling asleep. And worse of all, there was knowing I cheated on my girlfriend that night. Worse, I cheated on her with one of my only multiracial friends.

I ruined my relationship with both of them. I told my (ex) girlfriend the following morning, and she was heartbroken. We stayed together until after graduation, but it was never the same. The trust we had was broken.

My multiracial friend and I grew distant as well. She had the same heritage as me (black/native dad, white mom) and was one of the only people I connected to regarding racial impostor syndrome. We stopped speaking for the rest of the year.

Suffice it to say, I fucked up big time, and I was heartbroken all around.

In my past, I had felt disconnected from communities, but this time I felt disconnected from myself — my real self. I couldn’t get over what I’d done to people I loved, couldn’t believe the person I saw in the mirror. The Devon who challenged their 2nd-grade teacher about which hand to write with was not the person I saw. That me would have never done this.

Somewhere deep down, compressed under the regret for the identity I’d pushed away and the mistakes I’d made, a new me starts to shine through the cracks.

May 2016

I’ve lived in the real world for one year, anchored on the isthmus between the quiet lakes of Madison, WI, where I share an apartment with my two best friends. It’s been a rough year, but I’m relieved to take a trip with my best friend, Emma, back to our Alma Mater to celebrate our friends in the class of 2016’s commencement. The drive from Madison to Oberlin is 6–7 hours.

We speak at length about gender, and I fully realize something I’d been thinking about for a while leading up to that: I wasn’t a boy. Emma, who hadn’t yet transitioned, admits similar feelings.

Both of us were raised as boys, but we talked about how we didn’t feel like boys. Our families expected us to become men, but instead, we found our true paths. Emma embraced hers, and I stitched together my own.

It took trial and error. I realized during that car trip that I wasn’t a boy, though I also didn’t feel like a girl. Over the months that followed, I couldn’t place what exactly I did feel like. I related to some parts of being a boy, and others with being a girl. Eventually, I settled on the only gender that made sense to me: neither.

I’m non-binary.

I try it on for size: They/Them. It fits a little loose, but comfortably. I admit it’s a good look.

The new me takes flight, unsteady at first, but lifted by the slow discovery of myself over a lifetime.

June 2020

Anger.

Anger at the state of the world, at the deaths of innocents in a community I don’t feel fully accepted into. Anger that another 600-mile pipeline is being planned through indigenous lands. Anger at the thought that many years ago my black ancestor declared his freedom and took on the name Augustus, while today I sit here practicing the uncertain calculus of how much space my anger is allowed to take up.

And then I remember.

I remember the power of identity. The power of my voice in multiple spaces, amplified by a journey of constantly reminding myself that I am a part of these communities, and they are inherently a part of me. Reveling in this, I find the courage to work with my community for the better.

I am not an outlier. I am an in-between.

June 2020

I write this as an attempt to analyze and share my experience checking the “other” box.

To all of the others out there:

At first, I thought that my community existed in the cracks between communities — that I would find comfort clinging to one identity or another in those nooks and crannies. What I learned is that even in that comfort, you can still feel like dust trapped in those cracks, uncertain if a strong wind might come along and blow you from one community to the next.

But that could not be further from the truth. We are not dust.

We are the mortar.

An Injustice!
_A new intersectional publication, geared towards voices, values, and identities!_medium.com