Everyone exists. Everyone is someone. Everyone is. Right? That feels like a fair generalization. And that’s what it’s supposed to be, at least. But that is not the way it is for me. My identity is my weakest point. My Achilles’ heel. I have had to figure out every piece of myself on my own and piece them together like an over-complicated jigsaw puzzle. Pieces of me have been missing for so long to the point where I felt like no one at all.

It began a long time ago, the moment I was born. Before that, even. My mom, a white woman, met and married my dad, an Arab man. I was born mixed race and that was the beginning of it all. No matter what I tried to do I was always out of place in whatever group I tried to make myself a part of. I went into elementary school not knowing what church was. What Christmas was. What--or who--“God” was. I was white. But I looked “weird,” I ate “weird” food, and I had “weird” beliefs. I was Arab. But I didn’t speak Arabic, I didn’t pray, and I was so so far away from home. 

I was no one at all.

The next stake through the heart of my identity was the issue of my sexuality. Who did I like? Who did I want to be with? On the first day of 6th grade, I walked into the building and saw who I thought was the most beautiful person I’d seen in my life up until that point. And she was, well, a girl. A girl? I’m one of those (pretty sure at least). I was hit with a crushing thought: Is there something wrong with me? She was a girl. And that was not what it was supposed to be. Thinking she was pretty turned out to be the first domino to fall in an ongoing spiral into confusion, one that I still am unsure about. Since that day in 6th grade, I have cycled through almost every single variety of sexuality that people can have. Lesbian. Bisexual. Pansexual. Bisexual again. Gay man? Bisexual for a third time. And for a while, I thought I liked no one at all. 

I was no one at all.

The final (mentioned) crisis is that of gender. In this day and age, one will often hear the phrase: “Gender is a social construct.” Regardless of its status as a social construct or not, the battle of it was a very real one in my head. Man? Woman? None? Both? There were too many options and too many decisions for me to possibly come to terms with any. He/him. Man. That was what felt right. But could I really commit to that? I thought that I couldn’t until some night in April, right after I turned thirteen. Somebody told me that, “It doesn’t matter the life you’ve lived, in the end, we’ll all be sitting in a nursing home, and I don’t want to have lived my life in regret.” And all I could do was cry. If I kept living the way I was, I would regret it in the end.

I was no one at all.

I am becoming someone.

I am.