Sometimes… (article)

A grey wolf peeks out from behind a birch tree.

Sometimes I feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

(added 12/6/2022)
In our formative years, we all change certain aspects of our behavior in order to better fit in with others. We all compromise in different ways so we can ease tension with those around us. We give up parts of ourselves, thinking it will make things easier. It seldom does.

Those parts of us were meant to be there. They are pieces of a whole person and like the pieces of a puzzle without them you will never be whole.

I am not talking about the pieces we naturally alter or shed as we grow, those we prune as we mature. I am referring to the pieces of our personality that make us, ‘us.’

As an intersex/transgender person, I knew, from a young age, who I was inside. However, I also understood that I needed to be someone else in order to survive in my home and my little world outside it. Ridicule exerts a strong influence on a preschooler. Heck, it’s still difficult at 59.

We are all raised in such a way as to help us learn certain accepted behaviors, those that will allow us to better fit into societal expectations. Parents and siblings do this using a variety of methods.

When I reached my 12th year, my father and brother thought it best to toughen me up so that I wouldn’t be fodder for bullies. Having experienced the brutality of junior and high school, they understood that my being effeminate and one of the shortest kids in school would make me an easy mark. Over the next year or two, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. One lesson I learned was that if I acted like them, they would leave me alone. I quickly adopted that tendency across the board. I became a mimic, taking on traits of those around me.

…and I lost myself in the process.

I was still in there, though most of my emotions had been co-opted by defense mechanisms. My normal speech patterns and movements were replaced with more acceptable versions. I thought my ruse was successful, but years later, when I came out, some of the people who knew me before 7th grade and even after told me, “I knew you were different, but I didn’t know why.” Even my wife told me I was “different than any other ‘guy’ she had met.”

Early in our marriage, we discussed my “differences.” Years later, we put the pieces together as to how I had become intersex. This was confirmed by my mom.

As I began to allow my true personality to bubble to the surface, I still felt the need to behave as a male in public. I still put on wolf’s clothing. I continued to mimic those around me. By then, it had become a reflex action, one I could not control.

We all have faces we wear when in certain situations, with certain people. We have our work face, our family face, school face, church face, party face, friends face, and the face we wear when we are alone. With the right influences, even our alone face can be altered from who we really are at our core.

The idea of being a sheep in wolf’s clothing occurred to me while standing in a prayer circle with the rest of the church worship team on a Sunday morning before practice. I felt my difference acutely. I knew I was not like them, that I was hiding who I am inside, putting on the man they expected to see, and hiding who I am beneath the layers built up over a lifetime of fear.

I may have been raised by wolves, but I knew the truth. There was a sheep inside, who was ever fearful of being discovered.

 



~ elr

 


Image: ID 31036237 © Holly Kuchera | Dreamstime.com

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