Who are you?

To the world, I am a butch lesbian. I am a raging dyke. I am an intern. I am a student. I am daughter. I am a sister. I am too invested in other people to care about myself. I am one in millions of New Yorkers. I am straight. I am short. I am young. I am an employee. I am happy. I am funny. I am crazy. I am energetic. I am addicted to coffee. I am loud.

I am whoever everyone else needs me to be.

I cannot tell you exactly who I am. I cannot tell you why I do the things I do. I cannot tell you how I ended up where I am. I am not sure of these things myself. I know who I am to everyone else. I know how people I know, and people I never met perceive me. We are all put into these boxes by everyone we meet. Some people tell us how they see us, sometimes we assume.

I enjoy being different while walking on the streets of NYC. I enjoy being a crazy mystery to those who see me on the streets. I hope people make up a story about who I am, whether it is close to my real life or not I will never know (hopefully it is not the same as my real life). I love to be a mystery that people need to figure out and I like to think others like it too.

I make up stories about the people I walk by on my way to work.

To me, one man is a struggling actor about to propose to his partner tonight in a flying glass elevator. One woman is new to New York after running away from the home she could not stand. The couple on the corner kissing is surrounded by family watching, but he is sleeping with her brother and she is okay being his beard. The women carrying 50 Shades of Gray is pregnant with her fourth child and having a wonderful affair with her previous boss’s husband, who is the real father of the child. The young boy holding his dads hand can read the minds of every person on the street and his father is a superhero.

To me each person walking on the side walk can be anything. That person is gay, that person is straight, that person is a student, that person is a husband, that person is a cheater, that person is a lover, that person is a mother, that person is a wife, that person is happy, that person is depressed, that person is a superhero, that person is a mind reader, that person is a professional skydiver, that person is an activist, that person is a dancer, that person is a boss, that person is rich, that person is poor.

I see all kinds of people everywhere I walk in the city. This is who I see, not who these people really are. When I think about it, I am stereotyping. I am letting my imagination run wild. I am placing each person I see into a category.

At my internship we talk a lot about letting people be who they are, and not stereotyping and allowing people to present however they feel they need to. We talk about not “judging a book by its cover”, not assuming things about others.

We are all creatures of this world where we automatically assume things about every single person we see on the streets. We assume sex, gender, sexual orientation, personality based on race and religion. I try the best I can not to fall into this assumed world we live in. I try not to stereotype based on race or religion, or appearance. I try to be as open minded as I can be. I meet new people and I try to be as open minded as I can be. I believe in equality and love and human rights. I believe everyone deserves the same chances in everyone’s eyes.

I cannot help but think that my stories I make up on the street may not appropriate. I create lives for people without knowing them, without knowing who they are. My stories in some ways take from the way each person presents, walks, talks, looks. This is the world we live in, and I am not excusing my actions. But is it okay if I am not intending to hurt anyone, or creating these stories with good intentions?

I myself have spent so many days figuring out what categories I fit into, what boxes I fall under. I have spent many a nights trying not to limit myself to these boxes. I am so many things, that just by looking at me you cannot tell. Placing me into a stereotype may work for some things, but not for everything. I do not like having to be placed in boxes, even if I do it to myself. I recognize I somewhat place boxes around the people I see, but I like to think it is just another story; and I recognize that I do not actually know these people’s lives and these stories are not true.

When I create these stories about other people on the streets; when I make up what I think everyone is, it is not to place them in a box, it is my way of creating lives more interesting than the one I have. I have great friends, I love my school. There is nothing wrong with my life. But on the streets I have the ability to create lives of other people, dramatic, romantic, comedic, incredible stories.

These stories make me smile, they make me laugh, they can even make me sad. Sometimes I get so crazy I think they are real, and it makes me hysterical on the street (in a good way). I do not intend to offend anyone; I do not intend to place people into boxes that even I do not even want to fall into. It is my way of leaving reality for a moment and creating one more exciting.

I like to think I am giving people a chance to step out of their real boxes and their real lives for a moment and into a world where they can be a superhero, a gay lover, a skydiver, a bionic woman, a mystery. Sometimes the stories are tragic and many times realistic, and sometimes they are romantic and implausible.

When stereotyping is brought up it is usually in a context where someone is offended or was used in a way to talk to one person over another. I never thought about stereotyping as what I do every single day. Where do I draw the line at inappropriate and imaginative or creative?

This is something I am still figuring out.

Until I figure it all out, I apologize for the figurative boxes I may place people in unintentionally.