To a T

That’s a thing, right? Like people use it in talking? Anyway, this is my first post, very exciting. Which means I should introduce myself.

First of all, Bailey is not my given name, but it is the one I am choosing to go by. Always makes me think of that kids’ book Bailey Goes Camping—not as good as Amelia Bedelia or Dr. Seuss, but still—although recently it’s been connected in my mind to The Night Circus. Can you tell that books are important to me? That’s a box.

Other boxes: I’m nineteen, right-handed, Mormon; I don’t like cheese, once ate a chocolate-covered cricket and thought it was pretty good aside from the chocolate, don’t do meat but not on principle; my eyesight is poor, my coordination lacking, my hearing selective; I’ve never kissed a chipmunk, been skydiving, walked on hot coals (or water for that matter). There—do you know me now? Probably not. The point is, I can sit here all day and write out a list of the things that I am and am not, the things I like and dislike, the things I do and don’t do, but boxes are just going to create preconceptions, not really show you who I am.

I can’t make you know me, but I am going to try my best to honestly share some of my thoughts and experiences each week, and maybe that will amount to something in the end. I don’t really know what else to say in this awkward first post by way of introduction, so I’m going to leave it at that.

P.S. This is a passage I came across the other day, courtesy of a transgender kid, and I liked it so here it is: “It’s like when I was a girl they wanted me to be a certain kind of girl and I was like, ‘Uh, no.’ And then I became a guy. And then the same people were like, ‘Okay, if you’re going to be a guy you have to be like this and this.’ And I was like, ‘No, actually I don’t.’”