Once it seemed that I was floating the ocean on a big rubber tire. Freedom appeared to be right in front of me, something to be touched, had. Freedom was symbolized by so many things, and I had only a few of them in my possession. Every movement I made towards getting to this imaginary freedom only seemed to bring me further away from it. I stretched my hands out to reach it, and the waves would take me in the opposite direction.

One day, terrified I would never get there, I got it. I just got it. Freedom. Not to be touched or collected. It's to be chosen. At that very moment, my life changed.

Freedom has to be chosen continuously, and it's usually not the easy choice to make. I would lie if I gave the impression that my journey has been obstacle free. Quite the opposite. Sometimes I have chosen the normative route to soften circumstances for others. Sometimes I have been afraid. But at least I have the choice. I know I am doing, not being.

I am no more.

I used to lean on a lot of being. Being produces a series of consequenses: I am woman, therefore I wear make up; I am from the South, therefore I live by The Law of Jante. No. I may choose to do this or that, but it doesn't confirm me as being.

Caro is not transgendered.

We have placed ourselves outside the -gendered, and we refuse to step into it again. There is freedom in this. We no longer have to write our bodies in any other way than we choose. There is no being, no necessities connected to bodies. For anyone. No one is "male", "female" or "trans-".

To unlearn patterns of self, of being, is hard work. I wish I had never been taught the rules of the South. They still stick to the sole of my shoe like a piece of gum. Our child will never have to battle the Thou shall never believe you are better than us. We will never teach Luka that legs must be shaved because of whatever genitalia. Luka will never be told Good girl! Bad girl!

Children should be taught compassion, strength, kindness, openmindedness, critical thinking, love. This is the basis of a free life. Children should never be treated and naturalized as belonging to a category, forced through a cultural mold. It is cruel and unproductive.

Let's not do that.

If we do, they will have to float their own rubber tire reaching desperatly for their notion of freedom sometime down the road.

There need be no I am.

Or as Judith Butler has said: You may think you are, but that's the extent of it.