Story by: Anonymous

My older sister helped me make my Facebook profile when I was in seventh grade. Our family computer was on the desk in the loft, and one day we got home from school, made ourselves snacks, and hauled a second chair up to the desk so we could accomplish this very important task. We weren’t supposed to eat our snacks outside the kitchen so we placed them in the drawer of the desk-for quick hiding if need be, and we got to work. Once we started the process became all about defining who I was. Most questions had easy answers, hometown-Boulder, favorite sport-Swimming, favorite band-Green Day. None of these answers took me more than a second to tell my sister my answer. Then we came to a section on your birthday and my sister started filling things in for me, birthday-January 17th, romantic interest-Men, Religion- she turned to me and asked “do you want Christian or Lutheran?” but before I could answer she added “probably Christian, more people put Christian,” and finished my profile with a click of her mouse before I could say anything.  

I’m not sure what I would have said, after all, seeing the option of “both men and women” on the list was the first time I learned that there could be a third option.

I didn’t know what that meant, but I was certainly curious. I remember feeling confused and a little sick, but without skipping a beat my sister had turned to me and asked what picture I wanted to upload for my profile picture. All the confusion flooded away as we entered into a forty or so minute debate on if I wanted to choose a picture to make me look sporty, smart, or cute. We went with a photo of her and I from a dance competition a few weeks before- because it was sporty but not too jock, and I was wearing makeup so I felt I looked prettier. Then, my dad came home from work early, we slammed shut our snack drawer as he dumped his work bag in his office, and my sister told him that we had made me a Facebook profile. He stopped walking to his bedroom, in the middle of taking off his tie, and with a look that expressed just how tired he was, and asked quickly “add anything good?” Without missing a beat, I blurted out “that I’m interested in men!” With a confused look on his face my dad said something along the lines of “it’s trouble if THAT’s all you’re interested in” and walked into his bedroom laughing. I could have said anything. I could have told him about the swimming or Green Day or that I already had six friends and had been tagged in my best friend’s photo from the winter festival a few weeks earlier-a photo that would become my profile picture just two days later to make me look more fun. But I didn’t tell him those things, instead I blurted out one of the two pieces of information I hadn’t gotten to craft on my profile, the one I didn’t have control over. 

Neither my dad or my sister remember this day, just as I cannot remember the days before or after this day. My sister was most likely trying to get to the “fun” part as quickly as possible, and skipping over the boring details she was sure she already knew.

After all, we had not been taught that there was any reason to assume people were not heterosexual.

She had no idea that I would be confused by that question, and neither had I. My dad’s reaction is what I remember most clearly about that day, likely because my dad and his friends LOVED to tease me, and he recounted that story for a few weeks at parties, laughing with his friends over how I would be the kid who dated first, even though I was younger. It would be a very long time until I could make sense of this story, until I could understand why it hurt when my dad joked with his friends about my being interested in boys. But I do know that my dad had no idea he was hurting me, we made fun of each other about everything, and I had declared I was interested in men with the same confidence I had when I told him skiing was definitely better than snowboarding. I imagine that he was simply nervous I would date someone who’d be bad for me, or stop working hard in school because of a boyfriend, he was doing the best he could with the information available to him. 

This story matters in my larger story because it has affected how I understand the world. This story is only one example of all the ways I learned to fit into societal categories. It matters because that day I learned how to stay quiet when I feel uncomfortable and to let the world place labels on me.

This story told me that if I don’t quite know who I am, the world will tell me, and it’s easier to allow it. It would be years before I understood that easier did not mean better, and only now am I beginning to retell my story.

When I started working with youth a few years ago I started actively retelling this story with my life, inviting youth to tell me who they are, hoping they will learn to tell the world who they are so they will have fewer stories to retell.