To Remember Memories: A self-reflection on my past and present identities.

 

Hello everyone,

I am Diana Eakin, or that's what I have been calling myself for a couple years now. Though that was not always the case. I doubt any reader would know otherwise.

I first created BDunicorn as a platform to express myself and build my portfolio as a writer, poet, essayist, so many things are ahead of me. Yet, having a plan is actually quite new to me. I'll explain why later. I have been thinking a lot about my life, how it went, how it is going, and how it will go in the future. In this piece, I want to explore memory, using my past and how it relates to myself now. 

This is will be my bio-mytho-graphy, to borrow a phrase from Audre Lorde, who was introduced to be by the new and familiar Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube. At time of writing this, I had seen her most recent video called Identity: A trans coming out story. That was truly inspiring because I had resonated with almost everything she had said, and of course had loaded it with the philosophy

So, first I'll share a secret. I'm trans... big shocker, I know! As if I don't do anything but "Trans Stuff" because we're all typecast. I am no one trick pony! I have at least like two or more tricks, maybe three? You tell me esteemed reader, viewer into my spilled guts transcribed onto the screen. I spill my guts, spill them right into the void and bowels of the internet, to be consumed or read or never even looked at it. But hey how are you though? 

The perception that changes is real, and of course not just from you to yourself, but from others to you. For example I remember being seen as a wonder-child and now I am seen as a slightly above average mediocrity. 

I have many moments, almost each day, that feel I like I am in possession of another person's memories. I hope that the boy my parents and the society that tried to raise me to be was never real. He felt like a fiction, this child, this person, this non-binary woman, this mare? Existence has always felt a bit weird, without going into a huge spiritual tangent.

However, I have something that's just as deep and profound, nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a yearning for a past that either did happen, to you or not, or a fondness of a romanticized past whether it would have happened in your lifetime. For example people can be nostalgic over their children, often over some specific part of it, like something from popular culture in their youth, like television, movies, games, toys, or even food and drink. One may feel nostalgia for school, like high school or university, even if they only selectively remember the few good memories and block out the bad, or maybe for some there are too many bad memories to let nostalgia flourish.

I sometimes wish I could go back, back to a childhood or adolescence but as a girl or enby. I wish I had not been raised as a boy, though it's not like I got full boy treatment per se, I was never like others especially cis boys. It's something I talked about, but not in detail with growing up as a transfem egg, egg being a word for someone who does not know they are trans yet, before they come out to themselves.

I tried to make this blog into a bit of a longer essay, but frankly, I do not know what else to say except that I feel weird with nostalgia and past memories, even if I did good things then, I was not truly myself, and discordant identity development over the course of my life now brings context to my life, often it elucidates things, as in being a child who would try on my mother's and younger sister's clothes, momentarily rejecting the boys' clothes that were given to and expected of me. Even if in hindsight I felt that gender was not something I felt that usually applied to me.

How could I not have known sooner? I wish I had known sooner! These are things I ask and tell myself often with regards to age I transitioned, but frankly that topic is beyond the scope of this little article.

I do think about my past and reflect upon it so I can make sense of the present and hopefully take any lessons in heart to build a better future for myself and all around me. I ask many questions about who I was, who I am, and even who I will be, but that is just how my busy mind is. I want to do more for myself as a writer and artist, maybe turn my life into art for all of you to see and watch, and listen and read.

Hindsight was 2020, but moving forward with your reflections is 2021.

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