Gender | by Cbloxx aka Jay

Gender | by Cbloxx aka Jay

Pronouns: Them/They

For 37 Years I have always known there was something internally that didn't feel aligned, I was in conflict with how the world perceived me and pinned down by the momentary waves of discomfort it brought to my everyday life. As far back as I can remember, others' expectations and ideas on how I should present within my assigned gender felt like emotional restraints, unfair and inaccurate. As a child at times I was decorated to looked like a mini 80's alice in wonderland doll, quite an interesting aesthetic but the polar opposite of where I was in my soul . My gut resistance/rebellion caused many dramas throughout the years that surely became uncomfortable for all involved. Inevitably as a teenager, a glance in the mirror would reflect a boy in a drag, which at that time was unsettling and confusing to me. . I was dressing up to be something I wasn't, shaped into an ideal that felt like an ill fitting shoe. So in my momentary freedoms at home I would push for any tiny signal of masculinity that i could covertly get away with, whether it was stealing a bit of my dads deodorant, slicking my hair back as tightly as i could so it looked short, hanging around with male cousins who owned the toys i was interested in, day dreaming about the day i would marry a woman who saw me as the man i am.. that bit is really difficult to write as I am still truly on my gender journey as non binary.

I couldn't understand or reference my experiences against anything back then so life slowly rolled on with low self esteem, social anxiety, depression and a million failed attempts to live how others wished me to live. I found my outlets, at different points I found my tribe but I also filled my world with other people's issues to deflect from my own. In all honesty it would take the slow drag momentum of the Pandemic, a break up and a shed tonne of solitary isolation and hiking in the wilderness to illuminate me to my truest self. This is where my good friend and artist Mister Samo Inadvertently became an epic, wing cladded catalyst for my own realisations, through him being the model & subject matter of an oil painting that I spent most of pandemic producing..... onto a mirror of all things! (suggested by my dear sister who always seems to know me better than i know myself)!

Through a self help cocktail of therapy, low dose T, painting Samo's portrait, isolation i have begun to find myself.

@cbloxx_nomad