Regardless

By Saige Whitney

No information available at this time. Author will provide once available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669855798

Saige Whitney

to be followed

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When I was younger, I was a boyish little girl. A little girl who was so caught up with being one of the boys. A little girl who wanted to appear as masculine as she could. I wore beanies to cover up my hair. I hated, and, I mean, loathed, when someone would call me pretty. I wore basketball shorts and soccer jerseys as much as I could. I tried almost every day not to get my hair done and ran out the door.

Fortunately, as patient as ever, my mother would always block the door and have me wait five extra minutes to get my hair done. I had the A-line bob haircut, of course. What other classic 2007 haircuts were there for a little girl? I wore masculine shirts, and one time I wore this vest with a crown on it. I asked my mom what the print said under the crown.

Oh, Saige honey, it says prince, she replied. So I triumphantly walked on my way to school proudly. A few weeks later, of course, I became a little more advanced in my first-grade reading and vocabulary and found that it said princess on it. Out of all my five years of living at the time, I had never been so betrayed by my mom. I confronted her, never having been so deceived, especially over a pair of clothing.

The look on my mother’s face when I told her that I knew she had lied was so guilty. She couldn’t even make eye contact, my poor mother, she just wanted a regular little girl, and it was so immensely hard to clothe me.

Then there was my neighborhood and all my neighborhood friends. My two best friends were my neighbors, Treyson and Nicole, who lived next door. Nicole was the girl with whom I would get things done. Any party, pencil stand (yes, I sold pencils, erasers, homemade books stapled together, and many other little objects that I would overprice), she helped me run and supported me. We had karaoke nights, carnivals in my backyard, dance parties, and jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler underneath it. It was legit. Of course, everything we did would not have been fun without her there.

She was my partner in crime for any activity we put on as kids. She would listen to all of my emotional problems, and I would listen to how much she hated playing the piano and had to practice for at least an hour every day.

She never put me down for any of my ideas, even the stupid ones, like selling snow in a cup from our neighbor’s front yard. I literally scooped up a cup of snow from his front yard and sold it to him. The worst part of all of it is I think the neighbor actually felt bad for us and bought the snow in a cup (might I add that she’s still embarrassed about it to this day). That was Nicole, literally the sweetest girl in the world.

Then there was Treyson. Honestly, even when Treyson was four and I was six, he was a cool kid. He is the man was all I could think. He was the guy everyone liked to have around, and I’d always try to impress him.

You know, Treyson, I’m pretty much a boy, I would say whenever I would catch him playing with his Teckdeck fingerboard skateboards and he would question me if I really wanted to play too.

No, Saige, you have long hair. Boys don’t have long hair.

Treyson, lots of men have long hair! Our neighbors across the street, the dad has long hair.

Oh, Treyson said, clearly stumped in thought. Do you have nuts?

No, but for someone to pretty much be a boy, they don’t need to have nuts, you know.

Really?

Yeah, there’s a word for it. Mom! I yelled loudly into our kitchen. "What’s the word where you’re a girl, but you dress like a boy and do things like the boys, and are into Star Wars and football and stuff like that?

What? My mom said, trying to understand what I was getting at.

Mom, mom, I pleaded. I’m kind of a boy, you know? But I’m happy still being a girl. What am I?

Oh, my mom said, grasping more of an understanding as to what I was saying. A tomboy.

Yes! I threw my hands up in the air triumphantly to the sky. Treyson, I’m a tomboy.

Okay. He shrugged.

And ever since then, he accepted me as one of the boys. He never questioned it again. Ha.

People would ask me all throughout elementary school, Saige, do you really just want to be a boy?

And I would always just shake that little head of mine and say, No, I’m happy being a tomboy.

There was never gender dysphoria or anything like that with me. I knew I was in the right body I needed to be in. I simply wanted to be seen as a boy because boys were tough and powerful. And I wanted to be like that.

Let me tell you, I was proud of it too.

When I was in the first grade, I remember the teacher really respected me.

Boys and girls come and lineup, she would call whenever our class would go out in the hallways or to lunch.

Then there was Saige. I would go and stand in the middle because I was neither.

When I came into the fourth grade, I remember the boys wouldn’t play with me anymore. I guess I had cooties or something. Whatever, boys.

So I remember moving on consciously or self-consciously, one of those. I was in the store, shopping with my mom, when I pointed to a peace sign shirt, thinking it was so cool. I remember thinking self-consciously that it was pretty neutral to wear. Peace is for everyone.

I still remember telling my mom that I would wear that shirt. She was so completely shocked. And excited for me.

I began to become more and more feminine from then on. It was foreign at first, but I started to like it.

It’s interesting because, with all the friends I made, there was always this indescribable need, a longing for belonging in my heart. It’s not that I didn’t know how to fit in; I just didn’t know where to fit in. I knew that I wanted to have a really close girlfriend, but getting a close connection was difficult for me.

I think I generated this tendency from a young age. Maybe it was because I was a tomboy, and eventually, all the boys wouldn’t hang out with me anymore (except for Treyson, of course).

Maybe it was because I didn’t feel good enough for people. But deep down, I discovered the answer. I generated a fear of thinking all of my friends would leave me. So I would leave them before they ever left me. I guess I felt that if they knew the real me, they would leave.

People would say, Saige, we really should hang out. And I would think they really don’t mean that. People should stay a far away distance from me.

Around sixth grade, I became friends with a group of girls in my grade. For once, I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. That longing for a close connection with a woman, that need was met. It felt good.

I became somewhat especially close to a girl in the group named Cassidy. She was fearless, tall, and complete with a pretty brown hue to her skin. A fireball. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who snapped back with a roast so fast.

She could care about you so much and tell you that if anyone were to hurt you, she would beat them up. She said that, and I believed her. I just hoped I would never be the person to get on her bad side…

CHAPTER 2

So we have this little blonde child, this little girl who is open to people but against getting attached. Welcome everywhere, but belongs nowhere. I had my solid neighborhood friends always, but school friends, I don’t think I can say. Mainly new friends each year.

In my sixth-grade year, I found this cute friend group where I finally felt like I belonged. I had a close friend Brinley. We hung out a lot.

I had a hella sweet six-grade teacher. He was really funny. I remember not wanting to leave my sixth-grade teacher.

During the year 2011, it was during lunch, and I was playing the circle dodgeball game with a bunch of sixth graders. Basically, it’s this game where you run around this circle painted on the ground, and the person in the middle tries to hit you with the ball while you’re staying in the lines of the circle.

You run around and stay between the lines and try not to be hit by the dodgeball throwers (every time someone gets hit they go into the circle too) in the middle. You basically win if you’re the last person in the ring.

I had quit and was mad because I’m a poor sport, and was hanging outside the circle by the portables; and this kid approached me. I definitely knew who he was but had never really talked to him before. He just started walking toward me. We locked eyes, and he called out my name.

Hi, Easton? I said, waving back, confused with this form of interaction that I had never had with this kid before.

He came up to me and got right to business. Hey, do you like Chanceson? He looked at me intently.

I got excited; I knew the reason he was asking me that was because Chanceson was on the other side of the portable, wondering if I did. Obviously, he liked me, but he was afraid of rejection, so he sent his friend over.

I was so happy. A cute, normal-ish guy actually liked me for once.

At the time, honestly, I had this baby crush on this guy named Spencer. But this gesture impressed me because Chanceson wanted to point out that he liked me.

I nodded yes.

Okay, cool. And that was that.

There was now a mutual agreement between Chanceson and me that we liked each other.

So now we skip forward to the end of the year. I had graduated from elementary school, and it was the summer before my seventh-grade year.

It was the longest summer I had ever experienced so far. This was because I was on something called the track system all throughout elementary school. There were four separate tracks; A, B, C, and D. Basically, there were too many children at school to all be in the same building at once. So throughout the school year, your track would randomly have breaks. The track system for my highly ADD brain was really good for me. I just loved that my school did that. The only problem was that unless you were on A track, you ended school three weeks sooner than everyone else regarding summer break. Or D track, your summer started three weeks later than everyone else.

Anyways, I had never been on the A or D track, so the summer before middle school was really exciting. The sixth-grade summer was full of sleepovers, parties, and our annual summer trip to California. I thought that I was ready to take on middle school.

CHAPTER 3

When middle school started, I was nervous. I kept telling people I wasn’t, but I definitely was nervous. Confidence is such a game-changer for anyone who has it. That doesn’t mean you still can’t be hella nervous, though.

I remember my friends from carpool and us walking up to our junior high on the first day. The building tiered over me. We opened the side doors to the school and walked in. Boy, was it huge.

I quickly became familiar with whom I would keep talking to and whom I wouldn’t anymore from elementary school.

Certain boys I had crushes on in elementary? Probably not as much anymore. I doubt I will ever see them here, to be honest. The classes were so big, with so many people. So much of everything. Would I keep talking to Chanceson? Definitely.

It was cool seeing my friend Nicole around though now; hopefully, I could see more of her. She was a year older than me, so when she left elementary school, I felt like she had left my life.

All of a sudden, people in my grade were acting all grown up. It was like over the summer, everyone turned into wanna-be teenagers. I’m pretty sure I wore makeup starting at age 11, so I was in that group. It’s like everyone was figuring out all this maturing stuff. Frankly, we were.

So you take all these kids figuring out their bodies, actually growing into real sexual feelings, and then