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These days, I expect people to ask me what my pronouns are and to tell me theirs.
Maybe it's a regional thing.
Maybe it's an industry thing.
In journalism, it's now a standard. that I ask people their pronouns instead of assuming them.
Sometimes I feel like I've behaved distastefully when I haven't asked someone for their pronouns when I meet them, even socially.
I don't want to offend anybody by making guesses.
This is the opposite of the etiquette of my suburban hometown in the 1990s when I was growing up.
Back then, asking somebody about their gender identity might have been interpreted as offensive or as intentional dig.
That by saying, what are your pronouns, you'd be suggesting that the answer wasn't obvious.
Back then, asking might have been the ultimate insult.
I love that we are in a new era that is less binary and more respectful about how fluid gender can be.
Elise, one of our youngest listeners, who's a teen in the Midwest, also loves that the world has changed.
After all, she's the one growing and it might change, sometimes with the seasons.
She tells me at this point in her life.
Sometimes she feels like she her in the summer, but he him in the winter.
It can be confusing.
I think just the biggest issue has been dating, because so many people have found that they don't know who I am.
And so the only way people have liked me is being friends with me for like four months or more and being comfortable with me.
Because if it's just someone in the hallway, they immediately see me changing from fall to summer to winter.
And they are uncomfortable with that because they don't know if I'm lesbian or if I'm straight, you know, or if I'm a man or a woman.
As Elise's gender has changed, sometimes radically, one year to the next, she actually wonders...
Am I really changing at all?
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Welcome to what I'll call a season finale, a last episode of the year.
I do have some important and exciting announcements about next year.
I'll give them at the end of the episode.
For now, let's get into a story.
Over the summer, I got a letter from Elise, who you heard from at the start of the episode.
At 17, she was one of the youngest people who'd ever written in to share a personal experience with love letters.
She told me a story about figuring out who she is, Which is hard as a teen, but especially if you're being asked to give definitive answers about a more fluid identity.
It felt like a story that seemed perfect for all of us because, even though Elise is going through a specific journey with her gender, many of us can be pushed into lanes when it comes to who we are.
And sometimes we have to push back.
Just so you know, Elise is one of the most joyful people I've ever interviewed.
She's been listening to Love Letters since she was 14.
I asked her how she found the podcast and she said she was watching the Modern Love TV show, which brought her to the Modern Love podcast.
And then she found our podcast, which she said is more her speed.
Take that, Modern Love.
Actually, really, I love the Modern Love podcast team.
They're wonderful.
Love has no boundaries.
You can love both shows.
Also, please know we have permission from Elise's mom for her to be on this episode.
Hi, my name is Elise.
I am a senior in high school.
We're going to use she, her pronouns at Elise's request in this episode.
We're also going to go by her first name only because she's a teenager, and that's what's comfortable for her, for her parents and for me.
I love having young guests, but I want them to be safe with their personal details, especially when stories are sensitive.
My pronouns are she, her.
I also am fine with the they, them, too.
Elise, a self-identified queer person, has grown up in a big family in a Midwestern state one with all kinds of politics.
Her area has swung very red over the past few years.
But Elise notes, despite the way people vote, it can be really confusing and all over the map.
There are some very progressive people.
There are also right-leaning people who in person seem very accepting of queer culture.
Overall, my mom has raised me to be very open about many new ideas and to be able to experiment with what I believe in.
And I'll say with my dad my siblings don't live here anymore and ended up moving to different areas that were more urban, which isn't surprising.
It's a really big trend over here.
In 2019, Elise is in sixth grade.
She goes to a fairly typical school, has friends, and is thinking, huh, I'm really a tomboy.
Or maybe a boy.
Maybe non-binary.
She didn't really know.
And, unlike when I was a kid, there's more language for naming this and talking about it.
Middle school was when I started experimenting with pronouns.
And that was mostly from one of my long distance friends who was educating me on how she was non-binary.
And I was like, okay, maybe that may be something I'm interested in.
Really when lockdown happened was when I kind of had free for all, because you don't have that sphere of like middle school, where all these people are, you know, judging you in any way.
Many of our guests mention COVID lockdown as being a turning point for them personally.
Perhaps they met someone to date during that time or broke up with someone.
Maybe the pandemic changed their perspective when it came to life goals.
For Elise, most of her actual development into her teen life happened during lockdown and right after.
She was 12 when things shut down and her family decided to go to a cabin in Tennessee where they used to stay sometimes.
They wind up having a little COVID pod there with family friends.
One of the people in that family?
Elise's long-distance friend slash pen pal, the one who's non-binary.
In lockdown with a bunch of loving people around, Elise begins to consider her own gender some more.
In this isolated spot with barely anybody around, Elise has a very safe place where she can test things out, research and talk about who she is.
She can also just have fun.
My friend and I, we would often go to the backyard.
We would play with swords or make a fairy house or something.
Fairy house time is magical.
Then, life starts to open up again.
Things are more complicated. when Elise's family returns home from their pandemic hideaway.
She starts seventh grade.
School is still remote.
She's on Zoom classes from home.
But Elise goes to activities like sports in person.
At 13, she's thinking, not only is she not a feminine person, but she feels masculine.
Again, more boy than non-binary.
I chopped off my hair.
I was like, I'm strictly he, him.
I changed my name to Eli, which is a very great name for my name, Elise.
And I actually went to swim and I had to continue being a girl.
I kind of had to put on this entire situation where I was like, oh yeah, I'm still a girl, haha.
But I looked so much like a man that...
Old ladies would be like, oh, thank you, sir, when I'd open the door for them.
In eighth grade.
Life requires more explanation, because Elise is fully back in school every day in person.
She does return as Eli, the masculine person she'd become.
But it starts to get a little fuzzy.
Because Elise has compassion for people who don't know what to call her or how to refer to her, because everybody's rediscovering each other after more than a year of remote school.
Elise, who's just trying to assume the best of people has to navigate, who's confused judgmental, supportive or none of those things?
So my gym teacher would ask me, oh, do you want to go and change in the boys' locker room?
And I was like no, thank you, but that's, that's a really thoughtful thing to ask.
And i was like hey, they're accepting.
But then you also have a whole bunch of guys, especially they would sit us in a line on the floor in gym.
And this one guy, he turned around, he has a mullet and he's like a big fisher.
He just moved there from like alabama or something and he went.
So are you he or she?
And i was like oh, Very interesting question.
And that was something I didn't know how to answer at that point because so many people were still calling me like by my name.
In eighth grade, Elise makes a choice to be open about the whole thing.
If she's Elise to someone, great.
Eli, sure.
Just E, like the letter, also works.
It's all good as long as people are kind and open and respectful and get to know her.
Going from Eli back to Elise doesn't feel like a betrayal to herself.
It just starts to feel like she's a lot more than a name.
It's not this thing where I was like, oh, I have to fit in now.
I'm going to start identifying as cis again.
It was a slow sort of switch over from he-him to to just, I'll take anything, I'll be whatever.
And that was when I was most fluid.
But I ended up going through a really weird time in eighth grade where a lot of people perceived me as just this sort of non-binary person.
And everybody was very accepting of that.
And I was just like a guy but also just like a person walking around school.
And I ended up going back to the name Elise, because getting people to call me Eli wasn't really negotiable anymore.
For some reason, a lot of people get really switched up about it.
So it was either E, which was my first initial or Elise.
I was like, okay, I can pretty much be anything.
I'm just my own person.
I was extremely masculine still.
And I think I got like my first girlfriend after that year and everything.
I was into girls.
I know that.
I was also into some guys.
I do know that.
But there was just this one friend group and I had a crush on this one girl.
And then she was like, nah, I'm okay.
And I was like, I had a crush on this one girl.
And then she's like, no, I'm good.
And then I ended up finding my eighth grade girlfriend because we had a crush on the same girl.
And it was mostly just people that I resonated with, that shared the same interests as me or I just thought were super cool.
And I was also so melodramatic, I remember.
I'd make playlists and I'd cry.
But yeah, it was...
All over the place.
It was chaotic.
The people I liked and the different people I liked.
Then it's summer.
Summer of 2022.
Eighth grade into ninth grade.
It's very warm out.
This is when Elise feels a pull towards something different.
Very different.
Elise and her eighth grade girlfriend had broken up.
It was dramatic.
Eighth grade style breakup dramatic.
I was like, OK, it's time to experiment again.
And then that's when I got hyperfeminine. hyper feminine.
Elise suddenly feels a pull to be very girly.
And then that's when I was like, let's experiment with who I was, because I had become very stagnant.
Eighth grade.
I was the same person throughout.
I was masculine and then non-binary for majority of the year.
Femme summer was me growing my hair out, getting rid of all of these really baggy clothes that I'd learned to love.
I ended up putting on really drastic eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss.
And what do you know?
I'd come back freshman year of high school, another completely different person.
Like it was eighth grade again.
And I ended up talking with a lot of guys and it was yeah, it was polar opposite of what I was like identifying as seventh grade, if that makes sense.
This change feels organic, like it's also an expression of who she is.
I am on the tennis team and those are all those girly girls and they wear hoop earrings and skirts and then walk around and flounce around.
So yeah, it was just.
It was probably just also me honing creativity, being able to be like, I can play around with my appearance and I don't have to be just this one person who wants to experiment with how I look or how I feel, you know.
And I also think that part of it was just wanting male attention after getting so much Female attention.
Does that make sense?
Like I don't mean to sound cocky, because I wasn't actually, I was a nerd and I was kind of a loser, but it was finding this new group of people that I could interact with that I hadn't really interacted with before.
In a way, that was me being feminine.
But this winds up not being a fixed thing either.
Tennis season ends.
And this is when Elise realizes something about the cadence of her comfort and how she presents herself.
She realizes, wait, my gender identity and perception of myself seems to change with weather.
As the winter of her sophomore year begins, Elise puts on warmer clothes, bigger clothes one might say Eli clothes.
Elise begins to think her gender is tied to literal seasons.
It's almost like what brings her comfort on her body actually brings out different parts of who she is.
Like there are masculine and feminine sides to this person who is Elise.
But the time of year makes her want to lean into one side or the other.
It's really interesting because I've like unpacked it multiple times.
I think it was the familiarity of being masculine, because there's a comfort that I didn't get with being feminine.
So that comfort and the ability to sort of just throw on masculine clothes and to like run my fingers through my hair and walk around and to almost feel like I didn't have to show up for anybody, especially during the winter, because the winters get cold here.
So I was like, I have to put on a lot of layers and baggy clothes anyways.
And most of those clothes were just my masculine clothes.
Like, oh, maybe I'm straight and maybe I'm cis and maybe that's fine.
And then being like, but I'm still into girls.
Almost all of my high school winter days, I am completely masculine and will not look at a man and be like oh, I'm into you.
It's really weird, but it's also, it makes sense to me.
Elise is thinking, maybe I just change a lot.
But does that work for life?
Because even in a more accepting world, where so many people have learned to understand what it means to be non-binary, a lot of people expect you to pick one lane.
They want to know if you're a man.
A woman, non-binary.
They want that answer to be fixed for life.
Part of it is that depending on your gender, they may or may not want to date you.
And they're trying to figure it out with the best of intentions.
Elise asks herself, how do I find one answer for people that always feels true?
It's really complicated, but she'll explain when we return.
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We're back.
To catch you up, Elise is a high school student who learns in middle school that her pronouns are unclear.
Her dating desires are fluid.
She has a masculine era, a hyper-feminine era her freshman year of high school.
Then she realizes maybe her gender or her gender aesthetic and desires for certain company.
As she puts, it is seasonal.
Sometimes she feels like a guy.
She also might turn into the most feminine of young women who wants to date some guy.
But in life, even in the most welcoming places, she often feels like she has to pick a lane, one identity.
It's while we're talking about this that Elise brings up something she put in her first email to Love Letters.
Something I'll admit I didn't understand when I read it at the time.
I just found out I was a chimera.
And I was like, maybe that, maybe that means something.
A chimera.
When Elise wrote in, she was like, yeah, by the way, I'm pretty sure I'm a chimera.
What is a chimera?
As a fantasy book reader, I had only ever heard of chimeras as hybrid creatures that like a lion with a goat head.
Narnia stuff, really.
But Elise, 17-year-old Elise, explains to me that a chimera in biology is an organism, a person who has cells from more than one zygote.
Basically, a genetic mix.
Two sets of DNA in one being.
It's when Elise was in Tennessee that she learned she might be more than herself.
My parents.
They were eating dinner and they just went.
Oh, by the way, we think you might be a chimera.
And I was like, oh, what does that mean?
And they said, oh, they probably absorbed your fraternal twin in the womb.
How does that work?
I was like, okay.
Apparently I had a straight line down my body as a baby, and I may have two sets of DNA.
And that sort of threw me for a loop and I went through an entire – thing, just like last summer, where it was like, oh my gosh, what if that?
What if that explains everything?
Then i realized, like it doesn't explain anything.
Man, it's a cool fact i know about myself.
Yeah, you have two sets of dna and you also are two people whilst also being one.
By the way, i talked to elise's mom about this.
She said that when elise was born, elise's skin was temporarily two different tones.
Elise's mom has offered for Elise to get officially tested to see if she's a chimera, but Elise hasn't taken her up on her offer yet.
So their speculation about Elise's DNA is more in the realm of interesting backstory than scientific explanation.
But even without a diagnosis, Elise knows some things about herself.
I get attacked by dogs a lot because I smell like two people, but that doesn't mean that it explains anything my fluidity.
It's just, it's just like, you are who you are.
I am who I am.
Back to the story and onto the question of dating.
Elise leaves ninth grade feeling very fluid and also very frustrated because as she goes through school as someone masculine and then feminine, she does know she wants to date.
And this is when she realizes how much people want you to know how you see yourself and to help them know how to see you.
There is a story from my sophomore year with a guy who's the first ever guy that ever actually like.
Told me that he liked me, which was cool.
I had decided my sophomore year that I wanted to do my spring play and they had typecasted me as a really bulky buff british man.
I was goyle from harry potter and they typecasted me as that because it was winter when they did the castings.
And then it spring happened and i had this fat crush on one of the lead guys and he's the super lanky nerd.
He definitely wasn't the most attractive guy like in the theater group but he was and i i had a crush on him and um, it ended up being mutual later on.
But I remember the, the like dress rehearsal and I come out and I'm in this button-up white shirt and sleeves are rolled up and I have like a fake.
I have like a scar on my eyebrow and my hair slicked back and I just remember the terror on all the guys faces when I came out for the first scene.
It was.
It was really funny.
What was the play?
The play was Puffs.
It was supposed to be a comedic show.
I've never seen it, but I've heard about it.
And so there was a crush there with the two of you.
Yeah.
The ending to the crush is, it was a really tumultuous thing, though, with all of his friends.
And it was weird.
Basically, it's tumultuous and weird because Elise, in all forms, had been known as a very masculine, stoic person who many assumed was a lesbian.
And she wasn't into girls.
But in this moment, in a school production, she's a girl who loves dressing up as a masculine Slytherin character.
And she likes a guy.
When guys found out that the feeling was mutual and his friends were his friends were like, what's. you can't, we're pretty sure she's still lesbian, you shouldn't do that.
Just because I was fluid.
They knew nothing about me, but they were all freaking out because I had been masculine and they couldn't think.
They couldn't really conceptualize the fact that a person who is masculine sometimes could ever be in a straight relationship.
Even if I was identifying as female then, or just as like cis, there's so much uncomfortable energy.
The relationship never really happens.
It just sort of peters out before it can get going.
One relationship that makes all of this better for Elise is the one she has with her pen pal, the person from her COVID pod in Tennessee.
As Elise worries, will people like me as I change?
Will anyone get it?
She has this point of contact who is like, I like you and I've seen you in many forms.
Over sophomore and junior year.
Elise and this non-binary longtime friend make weekly calls and send letters.
Like paper letters, very old school.
They'd talk about how they're doing, friends, and they'd send ephemera.
One would send the other stickers from groceries.
In another package, a cutout of Werner Herzog's face.
I need to say Elise would have been maybe one of my best friends in high school, because my friends and I did this like we'd be in college and mail each other a weird collage just to say we missed each other.
It is a gift that Elise and her friend are far away from each other, Elise says, because they can show up for each other without having to go through the daily trials together.
Now that Elise is in her senior year, one thing she thinks about and talks to this friend about is college and What community works for her, if she's only her sometimes.
The pressure to pick a lane.
I think it has to do mostly with just the fact that people yeah, are so uncomfortable with the idea of fluidity, even when applying for college and college applications.
Do I want to go to a historically women's college?
How does that how will that work for me?
I toured Bryn Mawr a couple days back and actually I found that it was more seemingly accepting than any of the other colleges I'd been to, which is odd.
But then at the same time, would that resonate with me?
So yeah, there is a lot of pressure to sort of stay in a lane or choose, or to decide if I just want to be non-binary and go that route.
And there are a lot of people who are gender fluid and who switch from one gender to another.
And they that community like they get a lot of backlash and I'm not one to speak for them.
But it's yeah, people are super uncomfortable with change.
Just in general.
And when a person changes themselves constantly.
We first interviewed Elise when she had just finished junior year, and then again as she started her final year of high school.
A month or so ago, Elise told me she'd had a recent date with a guy.
She seemed surprised by this because she's mostly been into women and feeling more masculine.
She said of this date, it was not fun.
She also said she paid for the date and had all of these instincts to perform traditional male chivalry.
As she waits to figure out where she's going to college, she's working on a tagline like an elevator pitch for introducing herself, partly so she can send the right message to the people she wants to date.
Most of all, she looks for people who see beyond gender and into her soul.
And this is the thing that Elise has landed on amid all of this.
The lesson, if you will.
Elise has made radical changes to her look and the way she labels herself over time.
But she also knows that the whole time she's been exactly the same human, as Eli, as E and as Elise.
Which I get because, doing this podcast, we talk to people who become so different, radically different versions of themselves in their lives.
But they're essentially the same as they've ever been.
And one of my favorite episodes we did was about a couple who they've known each other forever and they are now a married man and woman but started they met at an all-girls school when they were young.
Elise did remind me of this episode.
It's called Still the One from 2022.
It was about two people who met at an all-girls school and over many years they fall in love.
One person becomes a trans man who looks a lot like Justin Bieber, and now their husband and wife.
And they both said it just felt natural because they were the same as they had always been.
The gender piece of it seemed arbitrary and outside of their story.
And it's certainly a big part of their story, but it's not like the cis woman in the relationship was like.
She seemed to not have that much adjustment to this new version of her partner being a man.
And I just thought, to what extent do you feel like other people demand consistency?
And the way in which I met you is the way you will remain.
Or are people more open, especially at your age, that the person they love may evolve within their own personality and space?
The most consistent part of being a part of this, of my loved ones, are my friends.
And that's because I don't think my personality changes when I decide to do a change to my aesthetic.
And even my gender, how I present myself, my personality still stays the same.
I'm still the same person.
Some things may get amplified just because of how comfortable I am conveying myself, especially when I'm masculine.
I found that when I present as masculine, I have the ability to be more funny and to be more outspoken, which I guess is just more of the because of the social pressures.
And when I was a girl, you were like when I was presenting as hyper feminine.
I would be able to be more confident and have more of an ability to express myself and to express feelings.
But overall, like my personality continues to stay the same.
I do think it's fascinating how Elise ties certain qualities to gender, like comfort and humor to masculinity, and confidence and empathy to her feminine side.
She's pretty self-aware about why that is and knows all of it is part of her core personality.
Elise tells me that, beyond the lesson of your soul, is your soul even as you change.
Another thing we should all know is to be kind to each other when things are confusing.
And maybe don't get so hung up on asking everyone to label themselves in certain ways.
Just hear them.
Even if their answer is, I'm still figuring it out.
Usually when I try to tell people adults and kids is to just think of the person, but that they have no bodies, if that makes sense, that they only.
They're just there in your mind, just their personality.
That is mostly going to stay the same, whether they present as something different or not.
And we constantly stress about what we look like and what we present ourselves as.
And it sort of projects onto other people.
One thing I think like most, I would say it's their body, man.
It's their person.
They know what to do and they know how to make themselves feel like themselves.
So I guess my advice that's my advice is to just imagine that they're dumb just without a body, and that to educate yourself and to make them feel comfortable in their space.
When I started this season of episodes, I had this thought that all of these stories seem to involve moments of clarity.
In the Jeff Hiller episode, actor Jeff Hiller explained that when he was young he had a moment of clarity when he made a dramatic speech to a man who did not like him back.
In another episode, a woman named Nicole had a moment of clarity when she realized casual relationships, also known as situationships, might be quality life experiences.
Rory Uphold from our Halloween episode had a very big moment of clarity when she realized in a haunted house that her boyfriend was horrific.
Elise from this episode had an absolute moment of clarity when she began to understand that, no matter her gender or aesthetic, the core of who she is is pretty much unchanged.
And she wants the people who love her to be drawn to that.
I think, with these episodes though, what I also started to see is that moments of clarity don't represent final answers.
Every guest this season got some lessons, but they're still figuring things out.
None of the answers are fixed and we get to keep learning.
I think that's always kind of the point.
And this is where I'll give some updates.
Number one.
In case you missed it, when our Jeff Hiller episode aired, he had been nominated for an Emmy.
Days after the episode aired.
Okay, and the Emmy goes to Jeff Hiller.
Somebody somewhere.
He won that Emmy.
Thank you.
I feel like I'm going to cry because for the past 25 years I've been like world.
I want to be an actor.
And the world's like, maybe computers.
I think that means we're good luck here at Love Letters.
Congratulations to Jeff, who I also just saw on the Apple show Pluribus.
He was so good.
Number two.
In other good luck news, I recently got an email from Nicole from our situationship episode.
She told me that right around the time of that episode's release, she started dating a new guy who did not want to be in a situationship.
He wanted to try a relationship.
He wanted clarity.
I don't know what their status is right now, but the point is she was shifting gears again.
Nicole also mentioned to me that she doesn't think she would have been able to enjoy this new guy without her two year break from dating and her new attitude about life experiences.
She said of this guy, he's calm, steady and consistent.
Before I would have read his slow burn, quiet, calm as disinterest.
He instead shows his interest through consistency and acts of care.
Also worth noting, and I know this will be important to some of you.
Nicole mentions, this man is 6'4".
Now for our last announcement about upcoming episodes.
We will return with episodes in the new year, including new stories with interviews I love.
My goal is to have more episodes with you so we can spend more of the year together.
As part of 2026, we'll launch a very special stretch of episodes about life partners, whether they are romantic or not.
It'll really be a season about community.
I'll get more into that later, and I'll be asking for your stories.
In the meantime, have a very happy new year.
Know that at midnight, I'll be toasting you, because I'm always grateful to have you around.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
This episode was produced by Christina Honitou and Jasmine Aguilera.
Sound design by Jasmine Aguilera.
Special thanks to Linda Henry.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage singlehood friendship, whatever to loveletters at bostoncom.
When you send a question, you help other people who are wondering the same thing.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
I thrive on positive validation, and it helps me convince my editors to let me make more episodes.
I find new things out about myself every day.
And it's good to just be able to share a story, knowing that there are people out there that are also going through the same things.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
