The year is 2003.

I am currently in the 7th grade, and we've recently moved into a two story home after a pipe burst and flooded our house, leading to needing ongoing renovations for a year or so. I take the upstairs bedroom, tiny and cramped, because it's the furthest I can get from the rest of my family, and for my birthday that summer, my father - who I rarely see as it is - gifts me this game for my Gamecube. My father wanted a son. It's pretty obvious that, even without his drinking and drug habits keeping him constantly in and out of prison, that he had no interest in raising a daughter. He doesn't even know me well enough, because he never bothered to try to, to get me a gift that's remotely reminiscent of my personality.

But I play it, because at the time, this is what you did. In this day and age you had a select number of games because you were a child with no disposable income, so you simply played whatever the hell you had on hand in the given moment.

And to be honest, it's not a bad game. I'm not a sports person, exactly, but it's a pretty nice little title with some fun to be had, with really decent visuals and a killer soundtrack, and my stepbrother enjoyed playing it with me, which was always a bonus. I suppose it wasn't totally outside my radius of interest, after all I liked riding my bike, so it was hobby adjacent. And we did have some fun with it, especially with such a limited game library at the time. In fact, between my fathers disgust for my being a girl and my stepsisters ongoing sexual abuse, I basically reject femininity in all manners and instead adapt an almost non binary look. I wear slacks and mostly plaid flannel with big boots. I keep my hair somewhat medium length. I try to invest more interest in doing things outdoors that I don't care to.

Which is sad, when all I really wanted was to do girly things. I liked riding my bike and all, and call me a stereotype, but I just wanted to clip out clothes from magazines and make a fashion board.

It's a unique rejection when a parent completely ignores what you are and instead treats you as what they wish you were, and I'm not even talking about how my grades were bad and they wished I'd been a better student. I'm talking about my core identity. My father could've picked any game and I probably would've been fine with it. I like almost all genres. But he chose something that specifically made a statement. He chose something that he knew would hurt me. Try as I might to enjoy Freestyle BMX on the Gamecube, the only thing I could think of in the back of my head the whole time was how much my father wished I were born a boy, so I could do stuff like this with him.

My identity suffers so many crises through this time period. Not only am I struggling to feel like myself because of my fathers outright refusal to my personhood, but atop that I was dealing with watching every other girl around me start dating, while I stayed silent because I liked other girls. I spend a lot of time in my bedroom, specifically NOT playing Freestyle BMX because it just rubbed it all in so much more.

To this day I have great shame in who I am. I wish I were straight. I am ashamed to like more male oriented hobbies, and ashamed to enjoy the female oriented hobbies I love. I don't trust a single facet of my personality, all because everyone questioned each part as I grew up. And I know there's other examples, earlier examples, but this is one of the ones that really stuck out most to me. This was a deliberate choice in gift giving. This was a conscious decision in attacking me on a low key level. But even at this age I see through it all. I can see the corruption that is absentee parenthood, something even the parents who stuck around managed to be held accountable for as well. I know what he thinks of me, and even to this day he refuses to acknowledge me or my sexuality. I haven't spoken to my father in over a decade. Last I heard he was living on the street, which is frankly where he belongs.

I still have Freestyle BMX in my collection. I never got rid of it. But that isn't because I like it. It's because I chose to keep it around as a constant reminder that even when someone who should love you, someone like your own goddamn father, wants you to be anything other than what you are, it's okay to not. It's okay to ignore them and continue being yourself. And even in lieu of all that it's important to remember that sometimes, if you do get a little distracted and wind up going down a path that isn't for you, you can always find your way back to being yourself. Being free of others interpretations of you. You can always just continue being you. After all, being yourself is a lot like riding a bike.

Once you learn how, you never really forget.

My name is Mae. I write & make art for a living. If you like this review, you might also like my newest novel here, reading my media blog here and you can tip me for my work at Ko-Fi.