i am by gabrielle dinizo

Hi, my name is _____ and I am _____. 

I am fascinated by the way people can so confidently be one thing. Choose one defining characteristic. Pick one personality trait. Find one career. Confine an entire life into one blank line. 

When I was five, my parents put me in gymnastics. I was eager to be a student and master every skill fearlessly. I tumbled on the sprung floors, cartwheeled on the balance beam, and flipped on the bars, with ease. When I was seven, I watched my best friend fall into a hollow bar pit and shatter the bones in her arm. I realized how fragile my own body could be and instantly became fearful of the skills I had perfected. Too scared to fall, I knew I was no longer a gymnast.

When I was eight, all I wanted to be was a school teacher. I forced my mom to sit and be my student for hours at a time. I taught her fractions and long division and every new skill I learned in math class the previous day. My friends came over to help expand the classroom I had set up in the basement. Chalk board, white button up, glasses and all. I was a teacher. 

When I was nine, I traded the mat and chalkboard in for a pair of black leather jazz shoes. After the first class, I knew I wanted to be a dancer. It felt natural, yet foreign. My body could speak in ways that my mouth could not express and gymnastics did not allow. Each year I enrolled in more dance classes than the last. My entire identity became dance. Soon I was in the same studio for five hours, six days a week. I was bred in this environment where everyone tried to be exactly the same as the person who stood next to them. Master the same shapes, look the same, breath the same, and ultimately accomplish the same in life—become a professional dancer. There was no variation allowed. No colored leotards, no jewelry, no hair dye, no me, my fifteen-year-old mind thought. 

What is me? My identity?

When I was old enough to go to college, I knew I had to leave the suburbs. I outgrew Dayton and its closed-minded inhabitants before I was grown myself. The logical move for a dancer was to New York City. I have to live in a certain place to be a certain thing? I found this idea puzzling, but as in other moments that just felt right, I did not question it. When I arrived, I felt accepted and seen by this place I barely knew. It felt as natural to me as that first day in those shiny black leather shoes. I was finally a New Yorker.

Where is identity? 

In the accessories you put on top of yourself? In an area code? 

When I was no longer young but not quite old, I started to feel the walls of the box that I had put myself in. First days and ice-breakers swept an instant blanket of anxiety over me. My friends would present complex fun facts and I hid comfortably behind “I am a dancer.” I knew I had other interests. Other layers to me. But still, I felt restricted by my labels. 

What is identity? 

A list of skills and attributes you tell yourself that you are? 

I realized how parts of me contradict, yet inform other parts. I obsess over organizing my closet. Moments later, I throw clothes around as if I didn’t meticulously give them a home. I set a New Year’s resolution every single year and forget it by April. I express myself through movement, but also live with a journal in hand. I like both Coke and Pepsi, coffee and tea. I am extremely sensitive but can also put up a stone-like toughness if needed. 

Is identity concrete? 

Stuck in the mold you once made?

Written on a sticky, too-small name tag?

When confined in a house during the first months of the pandemic, the once sturdy and unwavering walls I spent so many years building began to crash inward. Where? There were no labels or boxes left. What? No places or phrases to hide behind. 

What was left began to unravel, like a tangled piece of yarn spanning as long as my twenty-one years. 

I may never have all of the answers but with each passing day, my mind untangles and reveals. I am daring because I was a gymnast at five years old. At eight, I embodied the role of teacher, which today makes me a leader. I used to live in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio with my entire family. Now, in my tiny New York studio I am independent. I was a dancer.

Constantly evolving, 

I am