Toto, I don't think we're in NY anymore...

(Posted by Dominic, '11)

*apologies for the blatant wizard of oz references, I couldn't resist. No, in fact, we are most certainly back in the Midwest, and while Dorothy is figuring out that she’s no longer in Kansas on stage in my old high school auditorium, I’m fighting off the panic at finding myself surrounded by people from my life before college, none of whom I’ve seen since graduation or before.

Don’t get me wrong- I was excited for this trip. But a sense of overwhelming panic gradually began to creep up as the car crept closer to my high school. I can’t bring myself to think of the building as “home”, though for four years I spent almost every day from seven in the morning until midnight involved in various activities ranging from orchestra to track and field to my own stint in the drama department.

I find myself, to my chagrin, thinking of this place as “before”, even though I thought I’d made my peace with it. Before college, before a list of personal experiences too long to go into here, and the big Before. Before being diagnosed as intersex. All this is running through my head as I realize that on my first day back, I’m surrounded by many of my old classmates, not to mention the teachers and administrators who all knew me quite well Before. My mind starts to race- will they recognize me? Should I be happy if they do, or if they don’t? Am I ready to see them? What are they going to think? Who do I need to be around them?

I plunge back into an insecurity about my identity I haven’t felt in a long time. I don’t want them to recognize me on the one hand. On the other hand, I’m not used to being anonymous in this building- there are people I want to say hello to.

To recap, I’m sitting in the middle of my high school auditorium for the first time in three years, a time during which significant changes have occurred in my life, not the least of which was being diagnosed as biologically intersex. I haven’t seen any of these people since graduation, a time at which I looked significantly different than I currently do. The level of comfort with my identity that I’ve recently found in New York fragments and dissipates into the cracks, just like that, and I sink down into my seat until intermission, at which point a new problem arises.

What bathroom am I supposed to use? There are two hours left of this musical- waiting is an option, but I’m uncomfortable enough as it is. The problem lies in the very cause of my current nonphysical discomfort. Before being diagnosed I was living (albeit unsuccessfully) as the opposite gender, as that was what doctors saw fit to put on my birth certificate.

I take a deep breath, ask the wizard for some courage, and decide to brave the proverbial yellow brick road. All goes well until I’m on my way back, walking as quickly as possible. I run into a cluster of people, or, rather, their shoes, since I’m only looking at the tiled floor. I look up to find my way around them, and- find myself face to face with an old friend with whom I spent much of my childhood from three months on. Her face and mine register a mix of confusion and surprise, and my fragile courage takes the opportunity to flee. I’m left alone, face-to-face with her.

“Oh! Uhhhh…Sorry!” With that ingenious response, I pull an about face and get back to the relative anonymity of my seat as quickly as possible. Whew. Crisis averted.

Wait. Sorry? For what? Since when do I find it necessary to apologize for my existence? I’m starting to realize what an effect being back home is having on me- in New York, I have started over, begun to rebuild myself and become comfortable with my existence. When I’m back in Michigan, it’s nearly impossible to avoid looking at myself growing up, if not in the pictures that seem to fill my parents’ home, in the memories that this place is saturated with.

I was always teased, and on several occasions throughout my adolescence I was physically assaulted by my peers for failing to appear “normal” for my supposed gender, especially after hitting two separate, oppositely sexed puberties by the age of twelve, producing visible and less visible changes in my physiology, which my classmates immediately picked up on. After my first school dance, during which a “well-meaning” classmate pulled down my pants to “see what I was”, I used to feel very much the same way I’m feeling right now. That is, alone, scared, singled out, abnormal, and ready to apologize for it.

Feeling even more conspicuous, and more than a little angry at myself for my reaction, I scrunch down in my chair to try and enjoy the rest of the musical, and I promise myself that on the way out I’ll walk tall and be proud of the person I’ve become in the past three years.

Or…well…maybe I’ll just work on getting out the doors tonight without running. I do have eight more days to find my footing here. And you know what they say-

There’s no place like home. (Now, where did I put those ruby slippers…?)