What Jamie Is
Being nonbinary in a binary world requires the specific daily courage of insisting on your own reality.
Jamie || Nonbinary || Identity || Character
Iasked Jamie, on a Thursday in late November, what it had been like — coming to know themselves, coming to say it. I asked it carefully, not as a research question but as an honest question, the kind you asked someone when you were genuinely curious about their experience because their experience felt relevant to something you were moving toward in your own. Jamie considered the question with the same thoroughness they brought to debate arguments — actually considered it, didn’t answer from reflex. We were walking from the library to the coffee shop on Hawthorne that Jamie favored, the one with the specific worn-wood quality of a place that had been absorbing Portland conversations for decades.
“It wasn’t one moment,” Jamie said. “I know people want it to be one moment. The movies make it a moment. In reality it was — more like geological. Layers building up over years until there was enough weight that the layer below cracked.” They pulled their jacket tighter. “The word was actually helpful,” they said. “Having the word nonbinary. Because I had spent so long trying to arrange myself into one of the two available shapes and it kept not working, not because anything was wrong with me but because I was trying to put myself into a container I wasn’t the shape of.” They looked at me sideways. “Does that make sense?” “Yes,” I said. More sense than I was prepared to admit. “The word felt like permission,” they continued. “Not permission from anyone else — permission from myself. To be what I already was instead of trying to be a thing I was approximately but not actually.” We had arrived at the coffee shop. Jamie held the door. Inside, the warmth and the smell of coffee and the murmur of other people having other conversations. We found a table. “Was it scary?” I said, when we were settled. “To say it?” “Terrifying,” Jamie said, without hesitation. “The first person I told was Dean. And even with Dean, who was the safest possible person, my hands were shaking.” They looked at their hands, which were currently entirely steady around a coffee cup. “And then I told my mom. And then I told homeroom.” They smiled. “Each time was less frightening than the one before. Not easy — less frightening. The courage was cumulative. You do it once and you’re a tiny bit braver for the next one.” I looked at the table. “What if the first person isn’t safe?” I said. “What if the person you most need to tell is the person you’re most afraid of?” Jamie looked at me. “Then you tell someone safe first,” they said, quietly. “You practice the truth in safe spaces until you’re strong enough for the hard ones.” They held my gaze. “And sometimes the person you’re afraid of surprises you.” I wrapped my hands around my cup. “My dad,” I said. “He works so hard. He loves me so much. I don’t want to be something that complicates his life.” “You’re not a complication,” Jamie said. “You’re his kid.” “You don’t know him,” I said. “No,” they said. “But I know that a parent who loves their kid the way you describe your dad loving you is probably not going to love you less because you’re honest with them. Probably going to love you more, because you trusted him with something real.” I sat with this. The coffee shop murmured around us. “You make it sound manageable,” I said. “It is manageable,” they said. “It’s also hard. Both things.” They looked at me steadily. “You’re almost there,” they said. “I can tell.” “How?” I said. They smiled — the small, warm one. “Because you’re asking the questions,” they said. “You don’t ask the questions until you’re almost ready for the answers.”