Delving Into My Identity as Gray

Reflections
Over the last 4 months, I have (dare I say) completely come into my writing and creative
identity as Quintas Gray, the genderless “in between”. While I very much love my identity as
Catherine E. Foreman, there are far too many restrictions and weighted memories on it to use it
to write freely and fully. I’ve found that Quintas enables me to flow with my creativity and be
unbiasedly whoever or whatever I must for the sake of the piece.
I have spent most of my life writing very personal excerpts of frustration, only ending up
a dissatisfying, typical diary entry, which I recognized as being a creative spark, snuffed out by
overly critical thinking. The older I grew, the more I noticed this being a pattern in every aspect
of my life. I was that spark and I was snuffing myself out before I could ever become a true
flame. I began to believe I wasn’t quite as creative as I had thought. I chalked it up to genetic
narcissism or some such thing and had just about given up on writing anything of soul-moving
worth- I had signed my life away to research papers. It wasn’t until college, in my Creative Non-
Fiction Writing course, that I began to realize that finding my untethered creative identity was
imperative to my wellbeing going forward. While I spent that semester mostly convincing myself
I had talent worth tapping into and that I needed to allow myself to feel more freely (something I
had grown to fear and shy away from as it always led to disappointment in my ability to convey
so many, and such strong feelings), I shifted that practice of feeling into pride and wild abandon
this semester. I realized that I had to drop everything and throw myself off the cliff, and even get
a running start. I had to get over myself, in a sense. For years, I kept trying to stuff my perceived
self into all these instructions for being your best version and being free, but there can’t possibly
be instructions for any part of it.