Hat Theory

When I was 13 years old, I had a theory about who I was. That was all. A theory. 

It was an evening on the cusp of spring. I was at an open house for the arts program I would eventually spend 4 beautiful high school years attending. 

My mother sat beside me as I struggled to focus on the lacklustre presentation that onslaughts my attention span. A few rows ahead sat a person who I felt akin to. Not a common feeling for 13-year-old me. They wore dark colours, had short, dirty blonde hair parted to the side, hidden by a knitted beanie atop their head. I, too, had donned my favourite cat hat, along with a grayscale flannel and black Garage leggings. My terrible fashion sense humours me now, dramatic irony perhaps, or maybe foreshadowing. 

I was not the youngin who felt for others often. I had one crush on one boy whose smile in my 5th-grade classroom I can still recall, but this had only been the second time my stomach turned for a real, three-dimensional human being my own age. Yikes. 

I remember the feeling of determination once the principal had finally stopped their tirade of boredom upon me. I wanted to see the lovely stranger closer, and I dragged my mother along with me to try to catch them in their aisle before we headed to the drama room. When I caught up to their side, I might have whispered to them, “Nice hat.” 

Or I might have really wanted to. Memories have a funny way of fogging over after years of muddling the things you did and the things you wanted. 

However, I am certain they ended up in the drama room alongside me. I remember playing a round of park bench where I bravely sat next to them to improvise a previously eaten phone buzzing in my stomach. I remember the small audience laughing. I remember a new feeling of being proud of myself. And I remember my mother asking: 

“Was that person a boy or a girl?”

Shame. I remember that feeling well, too. 

I shrugged, I said I wasn’t sure. My heart wanted a chance to speak. She desperately wanted to say: I don’t care. It’s easy to remember the things you’ve always known. So truthfully, again my heart would say: I don’t care, and my head would respond precisely: “Yeah right! It’s just your theory”!

All throughout high school, I would shut down the knowledge. Anyone who was not certainly a man was not on the table for my affection. Who cares about their dark clothes and cute hats and dusty hair and lovely smiles and soft, rosy cheeks? If their gender was up for debate, the way I felt was creepy. It was wrong. I never saw that person again. Never got to know their name, never got to answer my mother’s question. An outcome that must be for the best. 

High school was not fit for a sweet girl lost at heart. The worst of the girls were calling each other dykes in the bathroom while posting selfies on Instagram, kissing with a piece of candy dangling between their mouths at the semi-formal. Some of my friends seemed to only cling to me when the men of their affections lingered at lunch. The ones who whispered about my sexuality before I did stopped hugging me as often. The girls who were gay wanted me to be masculine, liked me best as a projection of something I didn’t know I was. Each time I felt attracted to a girl I passed in the hallway, my familiar friend of shame would say hello. My head would implicitly scold me: look away. You just THINK you know. It’s a theory. It’s a theory.

Eventually, I told my mom my theory, and she confirmed the mind was right. “You’re too young to know! Wait before telling other people”. And for the best, I did. I waited. I still do. I still doubt. 

My theory. It was a dark forest, with tall, strong trees, root systems of great foundation, and branches that whispered every wrong way to go. Time seemed to make the trunks grow thicker, taller, yet somehow more familiar. It’s funny the way you begin to realize the map was in your back pocket all along. And with it, I carved out my paths, I lined the bark with fairy lights, I invited the people I love to wander the cobblestone, to let them dip their feet into my rivers, to let the light through the canopy to feel the warm speckles of pride. 

It’s a beautiful thing to realize you have always known who you are. Because I was right about the way I care. I had perfectly summarised everything I needed to know at 13 years old, in my high school cafeteria, at the boring slog of an assembly. 

Boy, girl, it may be the most insignificant thing about you. To me, it’s the hats you wear and the way you let your hair down when you take that hat off. It's the way you laugh by my side on the park bench. When I love, oh, I love. And when I love you, it’ll be for everything you do, and say, and intangibly hand over for me to protect. And when my mother or friend asks me about you, asks me about my love in the most unimportant way: “Is that person a boy or a girl?” I’ll finally let my heart and head respond in tandem: “We. Don’t. Care.”