Religious encounter (no, it's not what you're thinking)
I ran into someone I used to know yesterday during work, someone who knew me when I was Nancy. I knew she looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her at the time. I didn’t say anything or make any sign of recognition, though- I'm not out at work. I finished the transaction and wished her a good day, and didn't really think about it much afterwards. Last night, though, I figured out who she is and where I know her from.
Y’see, I knew her because she is the wife of one of the staff pastors of Davis Christian Fellowship (DCF), one of the many Christian groups active on the UCD campus. Both this pastor and his wife knew me relatively well. That, however, was when I looked like this:
November 2007
April 2008
August 2009
There is so much hilarity in these pictures, I don't even know where to begin. It was who I was at the time! The third picture, though…all I can say is, "BOOBIES!!" And wow, I look pretty femme. Adopting the femininity that was so out of character when you considered my tomboy past, and remains out of character today when you consider my transition and my identity as Nathan, happened in the same way as my brief re-exploration of Christianity: it was presented to me in a time in which I was in no condition to argue, and so I adopted it (though there was still a bit of friction and rebellion).
There would be no way to explain the Nancy→Nathan journey in the few minutes of interaction we had. There was already a line behind her, and it was growing. And though we knew each other decently, we didn’t have much of a relationship outside the bounds of civility and smiles. Though I do aim to be open about my identity, a long line at the Davis Dollar Tree is not the ideal place to draw attention to myself, especially not for my gender identity (I’m not out at work). There is another, more important reason why I wouldn’t have said anything even if the situation had been right, though. It requires a little backstory:
**Note: I originally intended for this to be much, much shorter. I guess it needed to be written out, though I didn’t mean for it to be a saga.
I (Nancy at the time) was born and raised in a Christian family. Religion wasn’t a huge part of our lives, but it was fundamental. (Not fundamentalist. Fundamental, as in "serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis.") All three of the Myers children were baptized and attended the preschool on the church grounds; we were Confirmed and were on a list to serve as acolytes for any of the three Sunday morning services; we went to church as a family, or as close to it as we could get, every Sunday; and we said a simple blessing before dinner, which we always tried to have together. Christianity (of the Lutheran style) was a significant part in my life growing up.
Then…I hit puberty (the first time). With that came the onset of my depression, which turned out to have quite an impact on my life. One effect was my decision when I was fourteen or so (not sure? Mother Myers, perhaps check me on this?) that I did not believe in God. My reasoning was that if God loves all of his people and wants them to be happy, then I would not have depression and feel miserable the vast majority of the time. I did have depression, though (and felt like shit a lot of the time because of it), and so therefore, God did not exist. If somehow he did, it didn’t matter to me. Due to this, I would not be going to church anymore, much to my mother’s chagrin. My dad, I think, was not quite pleased, but he said it was my choice and that he would respect that. I only went to church on special occasions like Christmas and Easter, and many of the “friendships” there ended (I had developed very few friendships worthy of the name; those that were I maintained). I pretty much cut God and Christianity and religion out of my life. And I was okay with that.
I, however, was not okay. Regarding the depression, I dealt with it in ways both productive, like exercise (soccer, track, and cross country) and actual friendships, and masochistic, like self-harm and smoking cigarettes. I had tried seeing a therapist of some variety a few times, but this was done mostly to please my parents. (I say mostly because I got some sick amusement out of seeing the various ways in which I disliked each therapist.) The general consensus was that I likely had clinical depression, and should therefore see a psychiatrist about getting some medication and also see a therapist regularly. I did not like this diagnosis. I agreed that I had depression (yes definitely), but taking meds and talking to someone? Ugh. No way, no how. Why? Because in my (sick) mind, taking meds would mean that I needed chemical (artificial) assistance to feel good, and therefore, it wouldn’t be “real” happiness, it’d be artificial. Um…Nathan? You’re missing a chemical, or a combination of chemicals, that your brain needs to function properly. *scoff* Yeah, whatever. I also didn’t want to pursue psychology/therapy anymore, because, as I told my mother, “I don’t like people. I don’t even get anything out of it besides.” Instead of using methods with proven success rates, I would rather smoke and self-harm and be miserable, because I didn’t really care but didn’t see a point in doing anything serious about it at the time. I had to manage my feelings in other ways too, because the self-harm and smoking only went so far before they became obvious (and I really didn’t like it when people asked questions).
I also managed my depression through exercise, particularly soccer-I had been playing since age four. At first it was only during fall season with AYSO, but as I got older it became more year-round between AYSO, tournament, and high school. Because of how I was (and still kind of am), I didn’t really get along with many of the girls on the soccer teams for one reason or another, but I did become rather close with a few, and had general friendships with some more. One of these girls lived close, in my neighborhood, and we had played soccer together a few times when we were younger. Then we both started playing tournament, and were also on the high school teams together. Our families knew each other, and we quickly became friends, especially when we both joined the track and field team. I started hanging out at her house regularly, and befriended the whole family, particularly the female head. Another girl from soccer did the same, though she came around less frequently because she lived farther away. The two of us had similar issues and we all got along rather well, so our little group hung out and talked on AIM a lot. This network of friends saved my life. Through their love I was able to abstain from doing anything too serious (i.e., suicide) and start thinking about different ways to handle my issues. I still engaged in the old ones, both because of their familiarity and because I had grown fond of, if not come to like, many of them (especially the cigarettes, a habit which I continue today, much to the chagrin of my mother). Once I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license, I would on occasion go driving in my dad’s manual-transmission 1993 Toyota truck, going nowhere in particular; just thinking, that’s all. Trying to keep my mind from being consumed by the depression by distracting it and focusing it on another activity.
During these drives to nowhere, I had to come up with somewhere to tell my parents I was going. I knew that just saying, “Hey, I’m going out, see you later!” without providing accompanying details would not fly, and I didn't think they would buy the “No, I'm not going anywhere. I’m doing it because I feel bad, and I need to drive and think so I can maybe feel better” explanation. For this reason, I limited these drives, but was able to go on a few during the sporadic periods where the family was out and I had free time. I also arranged something with a couple friends, where I would tell my parents I was going to their house, and then either go on a drive and then visit them afterwards or just drive, somewhere. If my parents contacted the friends for whatever reason, I had told them to say I was in the bathroom but would call them back. Then they would text me to let me know about the call, and I would return it. (Sorry for lying to you, parents- I found it necessary at the time. If only the effort I put into hiding things from you could have been put into something productive~ oh well.) One of the friends I would use as a cover was the girl and family I mentioned above. On the night of July 17th, 2005, I told my parents that I was going over to their house, planning instead to go driving for a while and then swing by their house later. So I went out.
I remember none of this day. All of this is reconstructed from what my family and friends have told me, and what my AIM logs and email say. At some point during my drive that night I ended up in the southeastern part of town, in an area where I didn't usually go. Apparently I was on a side road, which had a stop sign, that turned onto one of the main roads that had a speed limit of 55 miles per hour. Either I misjudged how fast he was going, he didn’t have his headlights on and I didn’t see him, he was speeding, or I did it deliberately-it doesn’t matter-but I made a right turn onto the main road and was subsequently t-boned on the driver’s side. My truck didn’t have airbags, and the seatbelt on the driver’s side was fraying so it snapped. The vehicle that hit me was a suburban, which outsized my truck by quite a bit. So, I was hit with quite a bit of force on the left side of my head, which was relatively equally distributed between my parietal and my occipital lobes, resulting in a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) with a scar that’s a little more than four inches long and about a quarter inch wide to show for it. The only other injury I got was a very small-like half-inch long-cut on my left pinky. The TBI was more than enough, though. It knocked me into a coma that lasted for 72 hours or so. I was taken to the city hospital initially, and then later transferred to Northridge hospital because it had a program specializing in TBIs. I believe the care of the doctors, nurses, therapists, and all other types of workers there saved my life. I stayed in the hospital for two-and-a-half months, during which I started having seizures and was put in a medically-induced coma to abate them, then later had stabilized enough to have the very beginnings of therapy. Northridge’s brain injury rehabilitation program includes physical, speech, occupational, recreational, and psychological therapy. When the doctors deemed me healthy enough to be released, they did so as long as I would start the outpatient TBI therapy program the following Monday, which continues the type of therapy received in the hospital.
During my time in the hospital, my friends were amazing. So many of them came to visit and talk, even when I was in no shape to respond. I have an entire folder full of cards, drawings, and other mementos from the hospital that just bring back so many fond memories. How can I have fond memories relating to my near-death experience in the hospital? Because I don’t remember hardly any of it. I have a few snapshot memories that are literally just images, all of times toward the end of my stay, and I’m not sure if they’re actual memories or memories implanted from photographs. (I have very many pictures of the whole time-I think my parents knew I wouldn’t remember much of the experience, and both took lots of pictures themselves and told my friends to as well.) The folder full of hospital love is especially quite nice to look through, thanks to everyone out there who was part of my TBI recovery.
Because my parents are reasonably active in our church and because the congregation is awesome, once they found out about my accident/TBI, my church agreed to add me to their prayer list and forward the request to all of the many prayer networks they are a part of-which basically means that a whole lot of people, most of whom I didn't and would never know, were praying on my behalf. When I was released from the hospital, I started going to church on Sundays with my family, despite my devout atheism before. At the time my brain was still in the beginnings of recovery, so I really was in no shape to argue. Once I gained a bit more of my brain power, my parents let me know about the prayer networks and showed me the collections of niceness that had been brought to the hospital for me. One thing I forgot to mention: my brain injury was super severe. Basically, I should be either dead or severely disabled. Instead, I’m “normal” in society’s eyes. People only ask me what happened if they see the variety of scars resulting from the accident and the stay in the hospital, or if they notice my tattoo, which is the date of my accident. The noticeable aftereffects of my TBI are memory impairment (I went from having a photographic memory to one that’s, well, not); easy distractibility and other issues similar to ADD; mild psychological issues, such as a greater propensity for depression (just what I needed! joy joy joy); and general lessened feeling on the right side of my body, particularly in my hand. And that’s about it. So that fact, combined with the prayers and good feelings, led me to, as is said, accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. (Whoa, that was weird typing that.) I continued to attend church and, upon enrolling at UC Davis (which is a miracle in and of itself, given the severity of my brain injury), wanted to find a Christian group to join. During one of the many club and activity fairs that UCD puts on for undergrads, I came upon Davis Christian Fellowship.
I decided to check them out, and started attending the weekly worship sessions pretty regularly (lots of different representations of worship occurred there, many familiar and some very different to this Lutheran boy, like raising one's hands in the air during a song or being inspired to call out to God, i.e., speaking in tongues). I became pretty good friends with a few of the people/friend networks there. I’m still in touch with many of those people today, which is pretty cool (a lot of you are on Facebook-hi!). Others, however, I didn’t get along with. This “not getting along with” ranged from just having different personalities and basically being civil to them (the vast majority), to adamant dislike (relatively few), which never manifested in any noticeable form but remained. Still, though, I felt a connection with people and God there, so I stayed. Besides, there’s never going to be a group where you get along with everyone, and it’s often worth it to persevere. During the rest of my first year I continued participating in DCF and thought of myself as Christian, letting that influence my life in a noticeable (but not excessive) way.
I went home over the summer, and when I came back I still went to DCF, though not as frequently as I had before. At first this was mostly because of engagements with other friends (both in and out of DCF), studying, related school activities, or some other valid excuse. My schooling around the same time had also started to change-I was taking more liberal arts classes and fewer science classes. My major entering UCD was Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior (NPB), which I chose because of a desire to be a physical therapist specializing in TBI recovery, (perhaps obviously) inspired by my TBI/recovery/etc. In the spring of my first year, however, I took WGS 50, Intro to Women’s & Gender Studies, and I fell in love with the topic. The following fall I changed my major from NPB to WGS. I’ll admit that while the change was mostly due to my attraction to WGS, it was also because, as a result of my science major, I had to take some fundamental science courses, such as math, chemistry, physics, and biology. I did well in math and decently in biology, but chemistry and physics really hit me hard. Part of that is because the Physics 7 program at Davis is stupid-I know a lot of people who would agree with me on that-but the main reason is memory. Those two subjects require a lot of memory, especially chemistry, of which I had to take at least two years (one was organic chemistry, which I had heard all sorts of horror stories about). Those two subjects were also key parts of the foundation of my major. A weak base would lead to trouble further on, so I decided that even though I loved the idea of studying brain injuries and being able to help people, I would likely have more success if I pursued a different route-and besides, on that route I could discover all sorts of new things to be passionate about (which I did). One of these is women’s and gender studies, and all of the related variations.
One of the many topics touched upon in some of the required classes was how faith/God/religion/etc. related to gender studies, and this led me to think critically about the relationships and permutations thereof. Of course I had to think about my relationship to God and religion, and the more I thought about everything, the more I realized that while I believe in something, the Christian God, and everything that comes with it, doesn’t do it for me. Figuring this out took a while though, and during that time I dealt with other topics brought up by school and situations in my life, like gender! Before my classes and studying, my understanding of gender had been like what I would say is most people’s: male/female, man/woman, XY/XX, sex = gender. Now, though, I know that gender encompasses so much more than the binary. Y’all know that I could write at great lengths about gender (and then many of you would comment about it and have your own words to add), but I don’t want to digress. Through my classes and related activities, especially ones from the LGBT Resource Center at UCD, I started to think way more critically about gender, particularly how it related to me. I thought about how I had regularly been mistaken for a boy when I was younger, my historical preference for activities marked for boys by society over those marked for girls, and just how I felt about myself. I realized I definitely didn’t like calling myself a girl, though at the time I didn’t think I was a guy either. I said I was genderqueer, which for me meant a combination of masculine and feminine that leaned heavily toward the masculine. (By the way, I didn't and still don't view femininity as inferior-Heidi Nightthighs, anyone? Just sayin'.) Around the same time, also through my classes and other activities, I realized that I didn’t just like boys, I like boys and girls and everyone else! That combined with my education led, and leads, me to call myself queer. The sexuality came before the gender identity, and sexuality is the relevant topic here.
DCF is one of those Christian groups where the college ministries are tied to churches in the town. I don’t know about the group as a whole (and don’t really care to look it up), but the UCD group, at least the pastors of it, take a literal, fundamentalist view of the Bible. This view especially applied to the hot-button issue of sexuality (and also, I assume, to gender identity, but I think that was less of an issue due to the extremely small sector of the population that identifies as trans* and the relative unlikelihood of those individuals to also identify as Christian). It uses the two Bible passages that are typically employed in defense of this view, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which condemn homosexuality. The pastors of DCF had both this view and, I can assume, a very binary understanding of gender. My queerness didn’t fit with this type of Christianity, though I did try to make it work-and that’s part of what would have made the encounter yesterday even more awkward if she had realized who I was. Though I'll never know for sure, I can only assume that word of my queerness spread amongst the pastors. The pastors knew I was queer because in spring quarter of my second year, after identifying that way for about a year, I decided that I had to try to reconcile the relationship between sexuality and religion. In doing so, I figured a good start would be to talk to the main pastor of DCF and his wife, who is also a pastor, about it and get their input. What an experience that was. They pulled the Leviticus passages, and visited upon a few of the others, telling me that God loved me, and while a sin is a sin is a sin and as humans we are imperfect and all of us sin, God really thinks homosexuality is particularly sinful and displeasing. But wait, don’t despair-it’s possible to change through prayers and therapy! I know it was done with good intentions, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. (Maybe cause of the “how you are isn’t right for God and you need to change” theme, I don’t know.) I brought the discussion to a close politely, thanked them for their time, and left. After that I didn’t attend DCF too much. I maintained a few of the good friendships I had gotten through it, but I stopped my participation with DCF and with Christianity as a whole, for the most part.
So hopefully after writing all of that I’ve managed to provide enough backstory to explain the main reason why coming out while cashiering at work, especially in that particular situation, would have been super awkward. Guess we’ll see after I get some sleep. I’ll leave you with this to think about:
“As the wheel of rebirth turns, Indians have always believed, the soul keeps casting off old flesh and wrapping oneself anew. Depending on one’s karma, one can be reborn as a tree, as a rock, as a bird, a beast, a man, a woman, a man with a woman’s heart, a woman with a man’s heart, even as a god or demon… endless possibilities exist in the infinite cosmos. The wise see masculinity and femininity as ephemeral robes that wrap the sexless genderless soul. The point is not to get attached to the flesh, but to celebrate its capabilities, discover its limitations, and finally transcend it.”
- Times of India, 3 July 2009
Y’see, I knew her because she is the wife of one of the staff pastors of Davis Christian Fellowship (DCF), one of the many Christian groups active on the UCD campus. Both this pastor and his wife knew me relatively well. That, however, was when I looked like this:
November 2007
April 2008
August 2009
There is so much hilarity in these pictures, I don't even know where to begin. It was who I was at the time! The third picture, though…all I can say is, "BOOBIES!!" And wow, I look pretty femme. Adopting the femininity that was so out of character when you considered my tomboy past, and remains out of character today when you consider my transition and my identity as Nathan, happened in the same way as my brief re-exploration of Christianity: it was presented to me in a time in which I was in no condition to argue, and so I adopted it (though there was still a bit of friction and rebellion).
There would be no way to explain the Nancy→Nathan journey in the few minutes of interaction we had. There was already a line behind her, and it was growing. And though we knew each other decently, we didn’t have much of a relationship outside the bounds of civility and smiles. Though I do aim to be open about my identity, a long line at the Davis Dollar Tree is not the ideal place to draw attention to myself, especially not for my gender identity (I’m not out at work). There is another, more important reason why I wouldn’t have said anything even if the situation had been right, though. It requires a little backstory:
**Note: I originally intended for this to be much, much shorter. I guess it needed to be written out, though I didn’t mean for it to be a saga.
I (Nancy at the time) was born and raised in a Christian family. Religion wasn’t a huge part of our lives, but it was fundamental. (Not fundamentalist. Fundamental, as in "serving as, or being an essential part of, a foundation or basis.") All three of the Myers children were baptized and attended the preschool on the church grounds; we were Confirmed and were on a list to serve as acolytes for any of the three Sunday morning services; we went to church as a family, or as close to it as we could get, every Sunday; and we said a simple blessing before dinner, which we always tried to have together. Christianity (of the Lutheran style) was a significant part in my life growing up.
Then…I hit puberty (the first time). With that came the onset of my depression, which turned out to have quite an impact on my life. One effect was my decision when I was fourteen or so (not sure? Mother Myers, perhaps check me on this?) that I did not believe in God. My reasoning was that if God loves all of his people and wants them to be happy, then I would not have depression and feel miserable the vast majority of the time. I did have depression, though (and felt like shit a lot of the time because of it), and so therefore, God did not exist. If somehow he did, it didn’t matter to me. Due to this, I would not be going to church anymore, much to my mother’s chagrin. My dad, I think, was not quite pleased, but he said it was my choice and that he would respect that. I only went to church on special occasions like Christmas and Easter, and many of the “friendships” there ended (I had developed very few friendships worthy of the name; those that were I maintained). I pretty much cut God and Christianity and religion out of my life. And I was okay with that.
I, however, was not okay. Regarding the depression, I dealt with it in ways both productive, like exercise (soccer, track, and cross country) and actual friendships, and masochistic, like self-harm and smoking cigarettes. I had tried seeing a therapist of some variety a few times, but this was done mostly to please my parents. (I say mostly because I got some sick amusement out of seeing the various ways in which I disliked each therapist.) The general consensus was that I likely had clinical depression, and should therefore see a psychiatrist about getting some medication and also see a therapist regularly. I did not like this diagnosis. I agreed that I had depression (yes definitely), but taking meds and talking to someone? Ugh. No way, no how. Why? Because in my (sick) mind, taking meds would mean that I needed chemical (artificial) assistance to feel good, and therefore, it wouldn’t be “real” happiness, it’d be artificial. Um…Nathan? You’re missing a chemical, or a combination of chemicals, that your brain needs to function properly. *scoff* Yeah, whatever. I also didn’t want to pursue psychology/therapy anymore, because, as I told my mother, “I don’t like people. I don’t even get anything out of it besides.” Instead of using methods with proven success rates, I would rather smoke and self-harm and be miserable, because I didn’t really care but didn’t see a point in doing anything serious about it at the time. I had to manage my feelings in other ways too, because the self-harm and smoking only went so far before they became obvious (and I really didn’t like it when people asked questions).
I also managed my depression through exercise, particularly soccer-I had been playing since age four. At first it was only during fall season with AYSO, but as I got older it became more year-round between AYSO, tournament, and high school. Because of how I was (and still kind of am), I didn’t really get along with many of the girls on the soccer teams for one reason or another, but I did become rather close with a few, and had general friendships with some more. One of these girls lived close, in my neighborhood, and we had played soccer together a few times when we were younger. Then we both started playing tournament, and were also on the high school teams together. Our families knew each other, and we quickly became friends, especially when we both joined the track and field team. I started hanging out at her house regularly, and befriended the whole family, particularly the female head. Another girl from soccer did the same, though she came around less frequently because she lived farther away. The two of us had similar issues and we all got along rather well, so our little group hung out and talked on AIM a lot. This network of friends saved my life. Through their love I was able to abstain from doing anything too serious (i.e., suicide) and start thinking about different ways to handle my issues. I still engaged in the old ones, both because of their familiarity and because I had grown fond of, if not come to like, many of them (especially the cigarettes, a habit which I continue today, much to the chagrin of my mother). Once I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license, I would on occasion go driving in my dad’s manual-transmission 1993 Toyota truck, going nowhere in particular; just thinking, that’s all. Trying to keep my mind from being consumed by the depression by distracting it and focusing it on another activity.
During these drives to nowhere, I had to come up with somewhere to tell my parents I was going. I knew that just saying, “Hey, I’m going out, see you later!” without providing accompanying details would not fly, and I didn't think they would buy the “No, I'm not going anywhere. I’m doing it because I feel bad, and I need to drive and think so I can maybe feel better” explanation. For this reason, I limited these drives, but was able to go on a few during the sporadic periods where the family was out and I had free time. I also arranged something with a couple friends, where I would tell my parents I was going to their house, and then either go on a drive and then visit them afterwards or just drive, somewhere. If my parents contacted the friends for whatever reason, I had told them to say I was in the bathroom but would call them back. Then they would text me to let me know about the call, and I would return it. (Sorry for lying to you, parents- I found it necessary at the time. If only the effort I put into hiding things from you could have been put into something productive~ oh well.) One of the friends I would use as a cover was the girl and family I mentioned above. On the night of July 17th, 2005, I told my parents that I was going over to their house, planning instead to go driving for a while and then swing by their house later. So I went out.
I remember none of this day. All of this is reconstructed from what my family and friends have told me, and what my AIM logs and email say. At some point during my drive that night I ended up in the southeastern part of town, in an area where I didn't usually go. Apparently I was on a side road, which had a stop sign, that turned onto one of the main roads that had a speed limit of 55 miles per hour. Either I misjudged how fast he was going, he didn’t have his headlights on and I didn’t see him, he was speeding, or I did it deliberately-it doesn’t matter-but I made a right turn onto the main road and was subsequently t-boned on the driver’s side. My truck didn’t have airbags, and the seatbelt on the driver’s side was fraying so it snapped. The vehicle that hit me was a suburban, which outsized my truck by quite a bit. So, I was hit with quite a bit of force on the left side of my head, which was relatively equally distributed between my parietal and my occipital lobes, resulting in a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) with a scar that’s a little more than four inches long and about a quarter inch wide to show for it. The only other injury I got was a very small-like half-inch long-cut on my left pinky. The TBI was more than enough, though. It knocked me into a coma that lasted for 72 hours or so. I was taken to the city hospital initially, and then later transferred to Northridge hospital because it had a program specializing in TBIs. I believe the care of the doctors, nurses, therapists, and all other types of workers there saved my life. I stayed in the hospital for two-and-a-half months, during which I started having seizures and was put in a medically-induced coma to abate them, then later had stabilized enough to have the very beginnings of therapy. Northridge’s brain injury rehabilitation program includes physical, speech, occupational, recreational, and psychological therapy. When the doctors deemed me healthy enough to be released, they did so as long as I would start the outpatient TBI therapy program the following Monday, which continues the type of therapy received in the hospital.
During my time in the hospital, my friends were amazing. So many of them came to visit and talk, even when I was in no shape to respond. I have an entire folder full of cards, drawings, and other mementos from the hospital that just bring back so many fond memories. How can I have fond memories relating to my near-death experience in the hospital? Because I don’t remember hardly any of it. I have a few snapshot memories that are literally just images, all of times toward the end of my stay, and I’m not sure if they’re actual memories or memories implanted from photographs. (I have very many pictures of the whole time-I think my parents knew I wouldn’t remember much of the experience, and both took lots of pictures themselves and told my friends to as well.) The folder full of hospital love is especially quite nice to look through, thanks to everyone out there who was part of my TBI recovery.
Because my parents are reasonably active in our church and because the congregation is awesome, once they found out about my accident/TBI, my church agreed to add me to their prayer list and forward the request to all of the many prayer networks they are a part of-which basically means that a whole lot of people, most of whom I didn't and would never know, were praying on my behalf. When I was released from the hospital, I started going to church on Sundays with my family, despite my devout atheism before. At the time my brain was still in the beginnings of recovery, so I really was in no shape to argue. Once I gained a bit more of my brain power, my parents let me know about the prayer networks and showed me the collections of niceness that had been brought to the hospital for me. One thing I forgot to mention: my brain injury was super severe. Basically, I should be either dead or severely disabled. Instead, I’m “normal” in society’s eyes. People only ask me what happened if they see the variety of scars resulting from the accident and the stay in the hospital, or if they notice my tattoo, which is the date of my accident. The noticeable aftereffects of my TBI are memory impairment (I went from having a photographic memory to one that’s, well, not); easy distractibility and other issues similar to ADD; mild psychological issues, such as a greater propensity for depression (just what I needed! joy joy joy); and general lessened feeling on the right side of my body, particularly in my hand. And that’s about it. So that fact, combined with the prayers and good feelings, led me to, as is said, accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. (Whoa, that was weird typing that.) I continued to attend church and, upon enrolling at UC Davis (which is a miracle in and of itself, given the severity of my brain injury), wanted to find a Christian group to join. During one of the many club and activity fairs that UCD puts on for undergrads, I came upon Davis Christian Fellowship.
I decided to check them out, and started attending the weekly worship sessions pretty regularly (lots of different representations of worship occurred there, many familiar and some very different to this Lutheran boy, like raising one's hands in the air during a song or being inspired to call out to God, i.e., speaking in tongues). I became pretty good friends with a few of the people/friend networks there. I’m still in touch with many of those people today, which is pretty cool (a lot of you are on Facebook-hi!). Others, however, I didn’t get along with. This “not getting along with” ranged from just having different personalities and basically being civil to them (the vast majority), to adamant dislike (relatively few), which never manifested in any noticeable form but remained. Still, though, I felt a connection with people and God there, so I stayed. Besides, there’s never going to be a group where you get along with everyone, and it’s often worth it to persevere. During the rest of my first year I continued participating in DCF and thought of myself as Christian, letting that influence my life in a noticeable (but not excessive) way.
I went home over the summer, and when I came back I still went to DCF, though not as frequently as I had before. At first this was mostly because of engagements with other friends (both in and out of DCF), studying, related school activities, or some other valid excuse. My schooling around the same time had also started to change-I was taking more liberal arts classes and fewer science classes. My major entering UCD was Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior (NPB), which I chose because of a desire to be a physical therapist specializing in TBI recovery, (perhaps obviously) inspired by my TBI/recovery/etc. In the spring of my first year, however, I took WGS 50, Intro to Women’s & Gender Studies, and I fell in love with the topic. The following fall I changed my major from NPB to WGS. I’ll admit that while the change was mostly due to my attraction to WGS, it was also because, as a result of my science major, I had to take some fundamental science courses, such as math, chemistry, physics, and biology. I did well in math and decently in biology, but chemistry and physics really hit me hard. Part of that is because the Physics 7 program at Davis is stupid-I know a lot of people who would agree with me on that-but the main reason is memory. Those two subjects require a lot of memory, especially chemistry, of which I had to take at least two years (one was organic chemistry, which I had heard all sorts of horror stories about). Those two subjects were also key parts of the foundation of my major. A weak base would lead to trouble further on, so I decided that even though I loved the idea of studying brain injuries and being able to help people, I would likely have more success if I pursued a different route-and besides, on that route I could discover all sorts of new things to be passionate about (which I did). One of these is women’s and gender studies, and all of the related variations.
One of the many topics touched upon in some of the required classes was how faith/God/religion/etc. related to gender studies, and this led me to think critically about the relationships and permutations thereof. Of course I had to think about my relationship to God and religion, and the more I thought about everything, the more I realized that while I believe in something, the Christian God, and everything that comes with it, doesn’t do it for me. Figuring this out took a while though, and during that time I dealt with other topics brought up by school and situations in my life, like gender! Before my classes and studying, my understanding of gender had been like what I would say is most people’s: male/female, man/woman, XY/XX, sex = gender. Now, though, I know that gender encompasses so much more than the binary. Y’all know that I could write at great lengths about gender (and then many of you would comment about it and have your own words to add), but I don’t want to digress. Through my classes and related activities, especially ones from the LGBT Resource Center at UCD, I started to think way more critically about gender, particularly how it related to me. I thought about how I had regularly been mistaken for a boy when I was younger, my historical preference for activities marked for boys by society over those marked for girls, and just how I felt about myself. I realized I definitely didn’t like calling myself a girl, though at the time I didn’t think I was a guy either. I said I was genderqueer, which for me meant a combination of masculine and feminine that leaned heavily toward the masculine. (By the way, I didn't and still don't view femininity as inferior-Heidi Nightthighs, anyone? Just sayin'.) Around the same time, also through my classes and other activities, I realized that I didn’t just like boys, I like boys and girls and everyone else! That combined with my education led, and leads, me to call myself queer. The sexuality came before the gender identity, and sexuality is the relevant topic here.
DCF is one of those Christian groups where the college ministries are tied to churches in the town. I don’t know about the group as a whole (and don’t really care to look it up), but the UCD group, at least the pastors of it, take a literal, fundamentalist view of the Bible. This view especially applied to the hot-button issue of sexuality (and also, I assume, to gender identity, but I think that was less of an issue due to the extremely small sector of the population that identifies as trans* and the relative unlikelihood of those individuals to also identify as Christian). It uses the two Bible passages that are typically employed in defense of this view, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which condemn homosexuality. The pastors of DCF had both this view and, I can assume, a very binary understanding of gender. My queerness didn’t fit with this type of Christianity, though I did try to make it work-and that’s part of what would have made the encounter yesterday even more awkward if she had realized who I was. Though I'll never know for sure, I can only assume that word of my queerness spread amongst the pastors. The pastors knew I was queer because in spring quarter of my second year, after identifying that way for about a year, I decided that I had to try to reconcile the relationship between sexuality and religion. In doing so, I figured a good start would be to talk to the main pastor of DCF and his wife, who is also a pastor, about it and get their input. What an experience that was. They pulled the Leviticus passages, and visited upon a few of the others, telling me that God loved me, and while a sin is a sin is a sin and as humans we are imperfect and all of us sin, God really thinks homosexuality is particularly sinful and displeasing. But wait, don’t despair-it’s possible to change through prayers and therapy! I know it was done with good intentions, but it really rubbed me the wrong way. (Maybe cause of the “how you are isn’t right for God and you need to change” theme, I don’t know.) I brought the discussion to a close politely, thanked them for their time, and left. After that I didn’t attend DCF too much. I maintained a few of the good friendships I had gotten through it, but I stopped my participation with DCF and with Christianity as a whole, for the most part.
So hopefully after writing all of that I’ve managed to provide enough backstory to explain the main reason why coming out while cashiering at work, especially in that particular situation, would have been super awkward. Guess we’ll see after I get some sleep. I’ll leave you with this to think about:
“As the wheel of rebirth turns, Indians have always believed, the soul keeps casting off old flesh and wrapping oneself anew. Depending on one’s karma, one can be reborn as a tree, as a rock, as a bird, a beast, a man, a woman, a man with a woman’s heart, a woman with a man’s heart, even as a god or demon… endless possibilities exist in the infinite cosmos. The wise see masculinity and femininity as ephemeral robes that wrap the sexless genderless soul. The point is not to get attached to the flesh, but to celebrate its capabilities, discover its limitations, and finally transcend it.”
- Times of India, 3 July 2009