Just like the author, I identify as genderqueer and nonbinary; I don’t see myself as male or female. And yet, there’s very little in this book I directly related to (except those specifics labels and a love of One Direction and fanfiction!)— and that’s exactly why I adored it so much. The scope and range of queer and trans experience is so fucking rad. It wasn’t my experience, but it was such a gorgeous one, one that I understood in my bones even though my bones had not carried that specific sort of weight. Because all of us have carried that weight. Of confusion and play and euphoria and pain. And while the way that manifests looks vastly different for all of us, we still understand one another. And God, I love that. 

At one point the author describes gender as a landscape, “Some people are born in the mountains. Some are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while other must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can’t flourish and grow. Between the oceans and mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.”  I’m not sure I’ve found the climate in which I thrive yet. I’m wandering around. Sometimes in the forest, sometimes in the ocean, sometimes in the mountains, sometimes in the swamps, sometimes in the desert and sometimes in places that are more and less and all.