I... it just never crossed my mind that that was something that I had to wear, so I always wore shorts. It was more comfortable than a girl's bathing suit and I liked it better that way. But I think of my, my kid self as being non-gendered. Very much just a kid; a youth. Like... yeah. Not a girl or a guy. Yeah, ha ha ha. It wasn't that I had to wear a shirt that got to me. I remember being at Jonathan's, um, house, swimming in his pool... er probably about to get into the pool, and realizing that it was no longer appropriate for me to be wearing trunks and that I should be wearing a girl's bathing suit. It was a really... sad feeling. I remember being, feeling like, slightly devastated that, that I could no longer be myself, that I had to conform with the norms of everyone else.

This one's my least favourite picture as far as it meaning something to me, but I just figured it was relevant in that Lilith Fair kinda changed my life both times I went, and that sounds really corny but... well I had a certain epiphany each time I went, ha ha ha. The first time was when I realized that there were all these girls that were hanging out together in public and that they liked each other. I'd never experienced that before. There was such an air of acceptance there. The second time I remember was the first time I started dancing, which was when I was 17. yeah, my whole adolescence came much later in life...

Yeah... shaving my head. so shaving my head was... I see my life in kind of three sections I guess, there's my childhood, and there's my adolescence, and there's my quasi-adulthood. And that day - the day that I shaved my head was the day that that I left my adolescence behind. And I can associate quite closely with the person that I was from that day on, where as before that I wasn't... I consider myself to be such a different person before that. Um, so yeah. I was also doing something that wasn't normal. And I wasn't doing it because it wasn't normal, I was doing it despite the fact that it was not normal. I was kinda listening to myself again, you know? Which is what I want more than anything in life, to be the true me, for everyone else to be the true them. That's what's interesting - the truth, not conformity.

And then of course my hair is like a huge part of my life, ha ha ha. I could write a book about my hair and how, uh, it affects me. Ha ha ha, yeah I do like my hair in that picture. Although, funnily enough that was like a month ago and I wouldn't choose to style my hair like that now. Ah, my looks and my hair is extremely fine tuned. And it's not necessary for other people to know the differences but for me, if my outward presentation doesn't correspond with what I'm feeling like inside, I feel noticeably off centre.

I think if I were to see into the future and see what I turned into, I would be extremely pleased. Because there were points in my life where I was very much in doubt of what I would turn out like, and that I knew that there was something that I wanted to be but I had no idea what that was. Uh, and I'm also really aware of the fact that that's changing and growing, and I'm excited to see what I'll be like five, ten years from now. Um, I think also physically, I'd be... I like the way I look now, which for a long time I hated the way I looked. Like, when I was 12 I thought that, and I think I was, like the gawkiest kid ever. I used to be a really good runner, and really kind've in tune with my body and what it could do and what it was capable of, and then puberty hit, and I was outta wack.

I guess the biggest things changing in my life right now are the way I dress. I'm more comfortable in my own skin. I'm wearing stuff that fits me, that shows my body. Each new thing I buy just gets more and more.... me. You see me more, I am Me more. Which I couldn't have done a few years ago. I would have been forcing it. I would have felt like was dressing in someone else's clothes.

There're no pictures between when I was 6 and 15 cause I don't associate with that part of my life at all. I felt very much not myself. And in a lot of ways I felt like what other people were projecting me to be. A lot of emphasis was put on my intelligence, and I can remember having to decide between gifted class or the class I'd been in since kindergarten ... and it was like, "Fuck!" The kids in the gifted class I didn't associate with at all really except on an intellectual level, and that became me. I was the smart kid. I was totally a social kid before that, but... it's a shame that gifted kids become "Gifted Kids", and all the other gorgeous aspects of them get lost under the title... Although it's a part of my life, and I respect that it's helped to make me who I am today, I don't look to it as a period of identification.

I strongly identify with this picture. I look... I can feel the power in it. There's, there's just no bullshit in it. It's me, um.... It's me. What was the question? ...So yeah. the powerful aspect of my child self, which I'm trying to attain now. And just, the pure honesty of it. I think my kid self is my most pure self. Since then it's not as easy to figure out what I truly want or am. I look to her for the truth. I think there's a place you can get to where if you remove all the tertiary, all the excess... there's a place where you don't really have to figure things out, you just know. And she was the master of that. I look to her for the truth.