Compacted Identity
How I learned to flatten myself into the shape others expected
I’m turning 55 this week and have been thinking about all my past selves—especially the kid versions, so here is a short essay I wrote as part of a longer collaborative piece called What does it take to be seen?
I love this version of myself, maybe because I have a 10-year-old son, or maybe I just admire her industrious spirit and the certainty she had before the world taught her to doubt it.
As a child of Middle America in the 1970s and 1980s, I learned that doing the right thing at the right time in the right way is essential. But somehow, the “right way” for a girl always came with questions, and here is the story of the first question that created doubt and the need to perform my gender instead of simply being.
At ten years old, a major tomboy, there I was collecting aluminum cans outside the stadium after a college football game. The crowds thinned, leaving behind a treasure trove of empties to trade in for coins and cash.
I worked methodically through the parking lot, drunk college students tossed cans in my path–easy money, I thought. Then I approached a group of guys sitting in their car, a growing pile of cans that was too tempting to ignore.
My hefty bag clanged down onto the cement as I asked, “Can I have these?” I grabbed the closest one and stomped it flat. This was my favorite part—turning the sticky cans into compacted disks. The weight reminded me of the money I would make from my haul.
Suddenly, I noticed their hard stares, and one guy with a sneer asked, “Hey, are you a boy or a girl?”
Straightening up, wiping my hands on my jeans: “I’m a girl,” I told him. It didn’t bother me that much—I’d heard variations of this question before. My hair was short by choice, a boy cut, no curls.
But then he tilted his head, studying me with mock curiosity. “Are you sure?”
His friends erupted in laughter. The sound hit me like a physical blow as anger and shame burned red across my face. Was a girl not supposed to smash cans? Have short hair? Walk alone? Be brave?
The confusion was complete because I was all these things, and I was a girl.
Brave. Dirty. Curious and independent, it was all me, so deeply ingrained in my ten-year-old identity. The way I moved through the world, the goals I set for myself, and the quarters I earned through my own determination.
That phrase: “Are you sure?”, followed by their laughter, cut deeper than the first question. This wasn’t just about my appearance anymore.
Those men questioned my knowledge of myself, making me doubt what I knew to be true.
In that moment, a shell hardened over my heart, and instinctively, I knew I had to defend who I was. I could no longer simply be.
My courage became a performance, an exaggerated dance to music I hated but compelled me to move. Here is my girlhood, my womanhood, in this skirt, too short, and make-up, too thick, but my tomboy heart beat steadily beneath the facade.
At 54, I want to tell that girl. Yes, I’m sure!
You are everything: a girl, a boy, a woman, a human with all the beautiful layers of becoming, like the weight of all those flattened cans, each dent and mark part of your essential value to the world.
Yes, I’m sure you are a girl.
Thank you for supporting my writing! If it resonates, please like, share, or comment—it means so much to me!
What parts of your childhood self are you still defending? Or wish you could reclaim?
Isn't it funny how comments by other people (idiots, really) can stick with us for so long? I'm glad you came full circle!
It's so sad how that stays with us. I had a very short haircut when I was five and was called a boy, and I have never been brave enough to cut my hair shorter than chin length since. That was over 40 years ago. And it still lives in me. I too am beginning to learn how to unflatten myself and let every part exist. Thank you for sharing your story <3