Hello, My Name Is River

Stepping into the expanse and accepting myself as I am

(this post is long, and it may be cut off by your email. best to open it fully before reading)

At the beginning of the pandemic, in May 2020, I came out as nonbinary. You can read about that here. My pandemic experience wasn’t typical (if one could say any pandemic experience was, which is debatable). I had been isolated for months beforehand, pet-sitting by myself in Europe. In late summer 2019 I was given the incredible opportunity by the Fulbright Association to work as an English Teaching Assistant in the Czech Republic. A few months earlier, in May, I’d sold my book, HOTSHOT (still in revisions) to Grove Atlantic, so the decision to accept the Fulbright was a very difficult one because I had one year to write a full draft of my book (I’d sold it on proposal) and I knew the Fulbright would be demanding.

As a child of two high-school dropouts, the Fulbright was a huge honor, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn it down although I knew that doing both things— the book and the Fulbright— would be difficult. But I couldn’t have imagined how difficult. We never can, right? Before I left for the Czech Republic I was struggling with my gender identity and my place in the world; having nightly panic attacks that kept me up for hours. Once I arrived in Czechia I became immobilized. Working on the book felt impossible, and I wasn’t able to take advantage of all of the wonderful opportunities for immersion in my small Czech town. I resented my mentor, an incredibly kind woman who was doing her best, and avoided intimate and deep connections.

My gender dysphoria (which I did not recognize then) was magnified by the rigid Czech gender ideals. I was deeply unhappy and wracked with guilt over this unhappiness in the midst of such privileged opportunities.

Read about my time in the Czech Republic here:

I had only graduated from my MFA program in creative writing a year earlier, in August 2018. For a couple years I’d been querying agents with a novel, receiving a lot of responses and encouragements but no bites— so selling this other book, whose proposal I’d written in the early mornings, evenings, and on weekends while working 50 hours a week as a nanny, was huge. How could I have known that my year’s deadline was essentially a farce? That after I turned in the first draft, my editor would disappear for over a year? If I had known this, I wouldn’t have been agonizing over the draft and I would have enjoyed my time in the Czech Republic (until March 2020, of course). But we can’t go back in time. I ended up leaving the Fulbright and house-sitting for several months in rural locations. By the time I decided to go back to the states, I was looking forward to being with others— being part of a community again. I found some roommates in Seattle, but of course when I got there we were put on lockdown, and everyone’s lives were upended.

This is all to say: I came out as nonbinary in the midst of all of that. It was the isolation that helped me, both before the pandemic and after. I had never before examined the deep discomfort I felt regarding my gender and being perceived in public as a girl and woman. Being a girl, and then a woman, never coalesced for me. I didn’t even like the words “girl” and “woman.” In isolation, I could sense that I was something else. Or nothing.

Now I describe my gender as a field of flowers. An ocean. A River. Something always in flux and never static. Really, I don’t think about my gender at all unless I am out in public. I present as a woman to others— I love wearing dresses (long, big ones; like potato sacks) and like having long hair. My facial features are very feminine. I have a large, voluptuous body. I have large breasts (that I have hated since I can remember). My entire being is coded as feminine. This use of the word feminine— the way I am using it— bothers me. But this is how our society codes people; as feminine and masculine.

When I came out, I chose the name Stacy because I’d used it as a child and it felt more gender-neutral, but that never integrated for me. There was too much personal history with the name. Then I tried Ján— an iteration of my first name, Janet. Also a no. Then I just went back to Anastasia, my middle name. I told myself it was fine. I didn’t have to like my name. And I had always felt a kinship with the Russian princess my mother named me after, so that was enough, right?

When I came out, I chose the name Stacy because I’d used it as a child and it felt more gender-neutral, but that never integrated for me. There was too much personal history with the name. Then I tried Ján— an interation of my first name, Janet. Also a no. Then I just went back to Anastasia, my middle name. I told myself it was fine. I didn’t have to like my name.

For some reason, I thought I needed to find some iteration of my own name. The “some reason” was my concern over my right to be nonbinary as someone coded as a woman by others. Over the past few months I have been thinking about the socially accepted (accepted by a small percentage, unfortunately, of Americans) idea of “nonbinary.” This word “androgynous” kept coming up for me. When I Google “androgynous” I get images like these:

Queen Tilda

Pooja Moor

Patti Smith

What I began noticing, and ruminating on, was that “androgynous” typically seems to incorporate more masculine features and styles. Notice the ties and the short hair. But also: notice the thinness.

Androgynous people are…thin? They can’t have large breasts, like me? This is, of course, fatphobia, which poisons everything, including queer culture and ideals. But does it mean that I can’t be nonbinary?

In the four(!) years since coming out, I have cut my hair short a couple times. Before I came out I’d shaved my head several times. But the thing is, like I said before, I love uber-feminine styles. Not in the mainstream sense (at all) but in the flamboyant sense. I love big hair, floofy dresses, bright, bright colors, and playing with make-up.

I have felt like I needed to play these things down lest I be seen as some sort of nonbinary fraud. This has caused me a lot of agony. I have thought about top surgery— but I don’t want top surgery. I’d love to have small, small breasts, but my breasts are also a part of me. They are a part of my sexuality. So is my big, overflowing belly. My hips and curves. Does this mean I am not nonbinary? Fucking no. It does not. Breasts do not make a woman. Nothing physical defines my gender. My gender, or, rather, gender-expansiveness, or my absence of gender, lives inside of me.

I started feeling like I needed top surgery just so I could manage the way I was perceived in public, but over the past year I have reached a place of peace with how the public sees me. I go out into the world and I am a “she.” That used to hurt a lot, but it doesn’t anymore, because other people’s ideas of who I am don’t define me. I know I’m nonbinary, and I’ve known this for a long, long time. I have no control over what people think about that. I am no longer thrown into a whirlwind of dysphoria when someone needs to categorize me as a woman for their own comfort.

In the queer community there are also rigid ideas of what a nonbinary or trans person should look like— how we get to inhabit our genders or agenders. I had internalized a lot of this, and since coming out I’ve had to work through that. The superficiality of appearance pervades our culture, including queer cultures, but there are many queer folks that I know who are moving beyond that, too.

What I notice is: the more secure I am in saying that I am nonbinary— in asserting my right to express myself in ways that feel authentic, even if I raise eyebrows— the more people can actually see me for who I am.

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So, here we are. The part where I tell you my name. River.

In an embodied sense, I am a River. My life has flowed like a River. I have many tributaries. I am connected to a larger ocean. I am never the same.

Since childhood I’ve been obsessed with this name but never shared my obsession with anyone. River has no gender. River holds everything. I am River.

I thought this name was too good for me. Such a beautiful, evocative name. And now I am claiming it as my name. In doing so, I feel a sense of cohesion I’ve never felt before. It just feels right. It’s me.

Since telling first one person, and then another, and then others, I have felt affirmed— not by their reactions (although they have been affirming) but by the way the name resonates in my body and soul. That has never happened for me before with any name— and I have had a lot of names. I always struggled with my name. I was born Janet Anastasia Selby, and was called Stacy until I was twelve. Then I asked to be called Janet, after my grandmother. When I was homeless and hitchhiking as a teenager people called me Wildflower. At eighteen, I asked to be called Ana, and went by that name for over fifteen years. Then, Anastasia. Stacy. Ján. Anastasia.

Throughout my twenties I’d make appointments under different names just to try them out. I understand now why I was doing that. Nothing fit. I was trying to find myself.

I rejoice in the taking of this name. I am so grateful I’ve reached a place in my life where I can allow myself to be River. It feels so right. More right than any name has ever felt, or will ever feel.

In writing about this, and sharing this, I hope you, who are reading this, can feel a sense of allowing in yourself, too. So much of my agony over my identity and name and presentation has been self-imposed. I have assumed that others are judging me and imagined how they are judging me. The catch here is that people are judging me— but is it me they are judging, or themselves?

As a last note, I will share something from years ago— something that’s bothered me for a long time. In 2016, when an acquaintance asked our social circle to use their preferred pronouns, which were they/them, I expressed to my friend that I had difficulty doing this. “They just present as so masculine,” I said, and she agreed.

I have returned to this moment again and again and cycled through many feelings about my closed-mindedness and unwillingness to allow someone else to exist as themselves, in my mind.

I’ve also returned to the moment in fear, imagining that others would say something similar about me. I am certain people have said similar things. But I know that my reaction was from a place of fear. I was scared of allowing others to claim their right to themselves and their identities, because I was terrified of also stepping out into the vast, unknown expanse of being. So much of our judgements of others, and our policing of how we think others should be in the world, is actually a self-policing borne from fear. We impose those ideals on ourselves, too, and keep ourselves imprisoned and small.

The truth is, we can be anything.

Sometimes it takes a whole life to understand that, and many, many people live their entire lives without coming to that understanding. I have compassion for them, and for myself. And I am grateful to be here, in this moment of acceptance, however long it lasts.

Me; River.