Dakota’s Story

Gender identity:  nonbinary

Sexuality:  queer, bisexual if pressed

Pronouns: any are acceptable, but they/them preferred

From: Southern West Virginia

Cultural background/identity: I would consider my heritage to be rural Appalachian

Interests:  I work in grief counseling, but I love to paint silly art and take little jaunts and see pretty sights and romanticize mundane things 

I’m a Southern West Virginian in a long-form wrestling match with the idea that people like me don’t belong in a place like this.  An idea espoused by well-meaning queer community members, sure that nothing good can come from staying, and echoed in turn by people who think the word “pronoun” should be banned from school settings. Half of me is convinced that if I love this place enough, I can blow warmth into it, as if you could tend a community the same way you would tend a hearth. Half-convinced in turn that the next legislative session will pack my bags for me.

Being transgender is a journey I have been on for many years.  As a visibly transmasculine teen I met no access to gender-affirming care, settling into an adult body with my gender packed up on a shelf until I heard the word “nonbinary” and the whole of me let out a breath. A clicking into place. I tell myself that it’s not a secret, really, but instead a truth that doesn’t need a home outside of myself.  I would cop to it if I was asked, I tell my closest confidants, but the point is moot. There’s no one who would ask.

Armed with discovery and taking wild swings at self-actualization, I find existing in my body is a new experience for me now. It is one I have not yet developed to mastery. How many years did my eyes look only forward, unwilling to peer down at these legs that have carried me? At these hands which have held the things I love most dearly. There is an uneasy truce between the torso and I now, as I know it never meant me harm. This body is a home to me, as it has ever been willing to be, and I feel it too could be tended and made into something beloved.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE:  Dakota was the last person I photographed on my wandering trip around West Virginia in the fall.   Their warm conversation and small town invitingly tugged me away from the most direct route back to my home on the coast that day, bringing just a little more joy driving through the colorful, low lying mountains and winding rivers of Appalachia.  I thought Dakota’s poetic style of writing describing their joys and struggles, and intersections of gender with Appalachian heritage was a beautifully fitting way to wrap up this trip around the heart of Appalachia. 

**Stay tuned for a few more West Virginia stories in coming weeks from folks taking a little extra time to write their stories:)

October 2024