Pheonix Lee Alexander Drymon

Allow me to introduce myself — again. My name is Pheonix Lee Alexander Drymon. And perhaps the most important word in that sentence is is. Some of you have known me under another name. Some have known me as a woman. Some as a man. Some have watched me transition, change, question, search, break apart, rebuild, create, love, lose, survive, and begin again. And now, at this point in my life, I find myself coming out once more. I am an androgynous lesbian. I use he/him, they/them, and she/her pronouns. All of them belong to me. I don't feel a need anymore to force myself into one small box simply so the rest of the world can understand me more easily. I have traveled from female, to male, and now toward reclaiming the female body and identity that are also part of me. I don't see that as going backward. I see it as finally having lived long enough to understand that becoming yourself is rarely a straight line. I am still the person who traveled every mile that came before this one. I am a grandparent. I am a writer. I am an artist. I am a lover of stones, symbols, words, fire, faith, beauty and things that carry meaning beneath their surface. My art and poetry have become another language for me. Sometimes I write about love. Sometimes desire. Sometimes motherhood, family, grief, jealousy, spirituality, memory or survival. Sometimes the words aren't enough, so I create an image. And sometimes even the image isn't enough, so I put fire around it. There is a reason the Phoenix keeps appearing in my work. A Phoenix doesn't pretend the fire never happened. It carries the fire with it. My memoir, Book of Me, is in many ways the story of that journey—a life marked by identity, love, family, faith, darkness, survival and grace. I have spent years trying to understand who I was supposed to be. Somewhere along the way, I began asking a much better question: Who am I when I stop asking permission to be myself? This is part of my answer. I am not erasing the man I became. I am not resurrecting the woman I once was. I am not apologizing for either of them. They are both part of the person standing here now. Pheonix. Androgynous. Lesbian. Artist. Writer. Grandparent. Creator. Survivor. Romantic. Work in progress. Still loving. Still creating. Still learning. Still becoming. And, perhaps for the first time in a very long time, simply allowing myself to be.