I Am Jaimi

IN COMPETITION, I don’t come out to people. They see ‘Jaimi Salone’ on the flight sheet for the discus and that’s all I can expect them to know. If I have to explain my pronouns to every track and field official … there are just too many variables to people’s responses, and I can’t let that distract me.

So, I keep it inside.

But outside competition, I never stop coming out. It’s an every day, every hour process. It can be a one-time thing when I introduce myself, or it can be exhausting, constantly correcting classmates, professors or family. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting. But my pronouns are important. It’s worth it to be addressed in a way that expresses respect and acknowledgement.

Words validate. I’ve gone long enough without them and I never want to be that lost again.

I am Jaimi Salone.

My pronouns are they, them, and theirs.

I am a student-athlete on the women’s track and field team at Stanford University and I’m majoring in theater and performance studies.

I’m Black, I’m bisexual, I’m trans, I’m genderqueer, I’m low income, I’m neurodivergent, I’m able-bodied, and I’m a survivor.

Who I have become isn’t defined by those things, but they allowed me to have experiences which have shaped who I am and who I want to be.

To summarize my identity in a few words and phrases is impossible. It took me years to discover the vocabulary that I feel best describes how I identify myself. Still, those terms are approximate. As vast as the English language is, it remains imperfect.

I do not fit into a pink or blue box. People need to know that there aren’t really boxes, and if there were, for the seven billion people on Earth, there would be seven billion boxes. Throughout my childhood, I felt trapped and confused by the gendered expectations people had of me. Only in recent years have I had the words to express who I truly am, even as I remain the same person I’ve always been.

I GREW UP being referred to as C******. My full name is C****** Elnora-Jaimi Salone. But my family called me C.J.

On the first day of preschool, my mom pulled out a polka-dot dress for me to wear. I was mortified. I wanted to wear jeans and a T-shirt.

“No,” she said. “You’re wearing this dress.”

As the youngest of six children -- three brothers and two sisters -- growing up in Minneapolis, I didn’t feel like the baby girl. I knew, even then, that was not me.

I asked my mom if I was born a boy. Maybe the doctors performed a surgery on me when I was a baby to remove my penis. And she matter-of-factly replied, “No, you’re a girl.” She thought she was reassuring me, but, if I was a girl, that meant I wasn’t one of the boys, and I felt wrong for not feeling certain in that “fact.”

My family situation is very complex – a lot of resentment, anger, and sadness, but also a lot of love. My parents met when they were in college and got involved in an extremely conservative church where the man is head of the household and the woman is subservient.

People think I don’t remember because I was so young, I was mostly a toddler at the time. But my memory is so long. Either you repress it or it is very vivid. There were times when I would replay it in my head -- my parents throwing things across the room at one another, and my screaming, “Stop!” as a Blue’s Clues CD shattered on the wall. Of course, you’re not going to forget that.

One time, I traced my hand on the unfinished drywall. That was not acceptable. I got spanked, and the person who was supposed to be watching me also got spanked.

When I was 5, my father beat my brother, who was about 11, so badly he was sent to the hospital. The cops were called. The nurses took Polaroids.

I was in Chicago when that happened. I was super excited when I got home. “Where’s Papa?” I asked. Nobody said anything. I remember how quiet the house was.

That was the break. That was when my mom said, “Enough is enough.” A restraining order was placed on my dad, though it didn’t apply to me or my youngest brother. My parents separated and then divorced. My mom, Rita Elnora Reynolds-Salone, a social worker, raised her children by herself.

I continued to visit with Papa until the relationship became too toxic for me. My father was extremely depressed, and it was a cause of a lot of anxiety and depression for myself. So, at 13, I stopped. It’s only recently that I’ve been in touch with him again. I haven’t forgiven him for everything, but he is the only parent I have left and I love him.

•••

THE OLD HOUSE on 3200 Dupont Avenue in South Minneapolis was home. That’s where my Papa taught me to ride a bike. I still remember the layout and the smells of the rooms. But we suffered some hard times. We lived paycheck to paycheck.

My parents already were behind on mortgage payments when they divorced. My papa lost his job at one point and they were deeply in debt. In 2006, the house was foreclosed and we began to move – a lot.

We moved to a two-bedroom apartment – five of us in that space. That was the apartment where I fell in love with television and movies, because my mom said it was too dangerous to play outside.

We moved in with a family friend in Golden Valley. That’s where I saw Barack Obama elected president, on an old box TV with a wood frame. There was a lot of tension in that house and, when I was in fifth grade, we moved again, to an apartment in North Minneapolis where we stayed until my sophomore year of high school.

From third through fifth grade, I was outsourced to a wealthy suburban school in Edina. It was hell.

I got a lot of fat-shaming. “Fat lard,” they called me. A lot of racial stuff. And “lesbo” was an insult at the time. I got bullied every day. I got in fights.

Young kids go through psychological torture when they don’t fit. They know they don’t fit, then people notice that they know. Then they pick on them.

On one really really bad day, the boys said, “OK, you can play with us.” And we played lava monster. I was the lava monster. I stayed on the ground while the boys were above on the playground equipment. I tried to chase them … they were spitting on me.

That type of bullying is super intense. I wet the bed until I was in the sixth grade. That’s how stressful that level of bullying was.

I’m very lucky I had my mom, because she listened to me. She went to the school and told the principal, “You need to do something.” The principal’s response: I should spend recess in the library.

I changed schools.

When I mention bedwetting, I feel like it’s important to mention how psychologically traumatizing bullying is. Bullying made me so anxious that I would have nightmares. Bedwetting was a part of that. I don't think it’s that unusual, especially with people who have experienced trauma. Even though I felt embarrassed and frustrated at the time, it isn’t shameful.

The stigma, besides the hygiene side of it, is because it’s interpreted as a sign of weakness. I would counter that interpretation with the fact that it is an unconscious physiological response and, all things considered, I was coping really well. I accept that bedwetting was a part of my story.

IN SIXTH GRADE, I received a scholarship to The Blake School, a premier independent school, which I attended through high school. Socially underdeveloped from my time at my previous school, and with major body image issues, anxiety and dysphoria, I created this persona where I was known for my intelligence. That was my shield. No matter what, I’d be smart.

It was a coping mechanism. I was a know-it-all in class, and I made sure my teachers loved me. It didn’t matter what the kids thought, because I was getting validation from the adults in the room. I even ate lunch with them -- pat on the head, ‘Good job.’ That was where I felt I shined.

Every recess, I’d go to ceramics and sit at the spinning wheel and make pots … a lot of pots. My art teacher, Brian Sago, finally instituted a system where you couldn’t sign up every single day and monopolize the pottery wheels. I’m the reason why.

By seventh grade, I started to come out of my shell. I had become involved in theater in sixth grade, but in seventh grade I began to play sports. Volleyball, fencing, softball, basketball. I wanted to play football, but at the last minute, my mom wouldn’t let me.

I weighed 210-215 pounds in seventh grade. By eighth grade, I was up to 225. We had a weight-lifting session in P.E. We were supposed to do pull-ups. I could not, for the life of me, do a pull-up. The other kids noticed.

My teacher, Jason Shantz, read the situation and asked me to try the bench press. I benched 100 pounds, as a 12-year-old. He praised me in front of the class, and encouraged me to try throwing. After a disappointing softball season that first year, I came out for track and field in eighth grade.

We had a phenomenal coach, Andrew Drzewiecki. We called him Coach D. He would be my coach from eighth grade all the way through high school. A discus thrower himself, he always sought to improve his coaching, reading books and studying the sport.

He also cultivated a dedicated yet fun-loving environment, centered around pie. Every year, we had pie day, where all the throwers would bring our favorite pies to practice. My favorites are rhubarb, cherry, lemon meringue, and key lime. When we ate pie at practice, we didn’t bother to pass out utensils. You’d have all this dirt on your hands from the shot put or the discus, and you just dug in. No one cared. We were family.

I never won anything until my sophomore year, but then the improvement really started to show. I went from eighth as a sophomore to second at the Minnesota Class 2A championships in the discus as a junior. As a senior, I won state Class A titles in both the discus and shot put. My winning discus throw of 155-1 came on my sixth and last throw of the competition. It was a personal record by five feet, and broke a meet record that stood for 22 years.

Then and now, I enjoy throwing because, even when things are discouraging, it gives you a reason to persevere. It is a never-ending puzzle. You are self-responsible, and you just have to keep trying, keep moving forward. There’s always progress, and even if there are setbacks, it’s a positive, because you learn from those setbacks.

IF ONLY LIFE off the track was so simple. I didn’t know who I was, I had severed a relationship with my father, my self-esteem was low, I put tons of pressure on myself to succeed in school, and I had several symptoms of PTSD.

My sophomore year of high school, I found myself crying all the time, lying in bed, and staring at the ceiling for hours.

My mom suffered from chronic illnesses my whole life, and alongside my father’s depression, I felt like I needed to be a perfect. I couldn’t be anything less than a perfect student or athlete or else I was making my mom sick, or adding to the stress of the family. I took on way too much.

I was in five clubs, plus sports, and staying up until 4:30 a.m., working on a homework problem. I couldn’t get it wrong.

My mom sat with me.

“You need to go to sleep,” she’d say.

“I can’t go to sleep,” I said. “I have to finish this math problem.”

Then, I’d slam my pencil into my notebook and cry. I don’t know how I managed, because I literally wouldn’t go to sleep until I finished. All that time, my mom would sit next to me and pat my back. I don’t know how she did that.

I credit Erin Adams, a counselor at Blake, for saving my life. Whenever I came to her, or Jill Rabinovitz, her colleague, super upset and depressed, they would listen to me. When I told Erin about my suicidal ideation, she said I should go to the hospital. That was a good choice. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, and began therapy and medication.

This was around the time that I began to come out to people. I’ve had crushes on boys and girls since I was 7, but I didn’t know that being ‘bi’ was a thing until I took a “Wellness Class” in eighth grade. All I knew was, I had so much energy, so many suppressed feelings, I didn’t know what to do.

It’s not that I wasn’t aware of my feelings, but I didn’t have a vocabulary for it. How could I like girls if I liked guys? How did I define myself?

I spent many late nights searching the Internet for answers, looking up Wikipedia pages for “bisexual” at 3 a.m. As far as my gender was concerned, it wasn’t until I took a gender studies class as a junior that I finally had a breakthrough. This was it!

JILL RABINOVITZ WAS the first person I came out to. I sat on a green couch in her office and told her through tears during my freshman year, that I was bisexual. She thanked me and told me she was honored that I had trusted her.

For so many years, I needed to find somebody who would give me pause when they looked at me. They didn’t have to shower me with love, just not dismiss me. That was the thing. Basic respect. That’s all you really need. When you’re little, you want to be respected.

If I were looking back, what would I tell a young me? The world might not get much better, but you will be a better person for going through the hard stuff. It will teach you that you are stronger than you thought. Hold on to the good and don’t fear the bad.

I soon realized I was not alone. After coming out to Jill, then Erin, I was welcomed in on a secret: “superhappygayfuntime.” J.J. Kahle -- amazing person, non-binary teacher, educator, cyclist, activist – oversaw a group of students, at varying levels of accepting themselves, who met in anonymity in offices around the school. This was the community that finally gave me pause. The one that said, at last, “Hello there. I see you.”

Equipped with words and terms that would help us understand each other, we’d try them out. Gender: demi-boy; trans-masculine; gender-fluid. Sexuality: ace; straight-curious; polysexual.

We piled into a small room and talked about our day, our week, and our feelings. It could be a cesspool of sadness, a little too much queer sadness. Stories of unaccepting parents, bullying, dysphoria. But, for me, it was a cool place to be myself. It was a place I felt respect … and validation … and love … and acceptance.

Everything began to make perfect sense. To put words to my life meant I no longer was just some freak. My discomfort was no longer my fatal flaw, but a sign that the definitions I had been given were simply not applicable. I decided that, when I walked into class at the beginning of my second semester of my junior year, I would say, “I go by Jaimi now. I use they and them pronouns.”

I’m still ‘C******.’ That hasn’t changed. But ‘C******’ is my old name – an ‘undead’ name, since it is still on my driver’s license and student ID. A dead name, in practice-- from a time when I didn’t have words to describe who I was. Now I do.

I am ‘genderqueer,’ an identity that may be hard for some to accept and difficult to wrap their head around. I explain it like this: Think of a pallet of paint. Someone could paint a white circle and say, “I’m a woman.” Someone could paint a black circle and say, “I’m a man.” But I would grab all of the colors and splash them everywhere. That wonderful, beautiful, colorful painting is me. Gender is a spectrum, I just happen to exist across a wider span of the continuum than a lot of people.

•••

WHEN YOU COME OUT to people, you really don’t know how they’re going to react. That was my fear when I came out to my mom. Would she think of me differently? Have I disappointed her? I’m still me. I just finally have words that describe my experience.

On my 17th birthday, my mom brought out a cake and lit the candles, and sang in her wonderful voice.

“Happy Birthday, dear C****** … C.J. … Jaimi … whatever you want to be called …”

It was small, but it was beautiful. She was trying. She couldn’t commit fully because she was going through her own illnesses. But she was willing. She knew I was still her baby. I was still her kid. Still nerdy, and weird, and eclectic.

Throughout my time in high school, my mom was suffering from uterine PEcoma, a rare tumor of the mesenchymal stem cells. She was laid off from her job and lost her insurance coverage. After a hysterectomy conducted over two surgeries, she no longer could afford treatments.

October of my senior year, I moved in with the Korslund family – parents Jim and Lisa -- in Edina. Their daughters, Hannah and Kate, were classmates of mine and we played on the same volleyball and softball teams for several years. Our mothers bonded as “bleacher buddies.”

My stay with the Korslunds began when I had the flu and stayed at their home for a weekend. After I got better, Lisa offered me the chance to stay longer-term. Considering that I had been truant over a month of my junior year between my depression and Mom’s illness, and was on pace to repeat my senior year, Erin and my dean at school told me I should seriously consider it. This was the hardest decision I have ever made. But my mom pushed me to put my education first.

Lisa, a leukemia survivor, is still a mother figure in my life. “Ease and grace,” that is her motto. I love and respect her so much. She is generous and kind and stern and holds me accountable. She encountered teenage depression with me and sat with me through panic attacks. Not only did she take me in, and house and feed me through the rest of my senior year, she helped my mom plan out her last few months and final wishes.

On December 13, 2015, my mom passed away. It was a Sunday morning, around 6 a.m., and it started to rain. It was as if her energy and life turned into the power of nature. It made perfect sense. The whole world felt like it was in mourning.

She never knew that I applied to Stanford, but would have been ecstatic to find out I got in.

I was with the Korslunds and we were sitting around the dinner table when I knew I would get an answer from Stanford through e-mail. I opened an acceptance to USC first. We were all cheering. Then I got to the Stanford letter and everyone went silent. I opened it. It said, “congratulations.”

I freaked out. I jumped for joy for 45 minutes, while also crying for my mom. I hugged Lisa. Jim said, "Rita is jumping up and down with you, you know." I knew.

ONE INDIVIDUAL I truly respect at Stanford is Dereca Blackmon, assistant vice provost and executive director for inclusion and diversity education.

She encourages those around campus – including student-athletes through her Courageous Conversations program -- to attack difficult subjects, and create dialogue and a sense of mutual understanding.

She has asked, “How would we think about sports without gender?"

She said, “Sports is probably one of the most binary places in our whole culture. What are we going to do with sports if gender goes away? There are people who want that to happen. You have a whole generation of people growing up that are at least exposed to the idea that gender is fluid.”

Track and field is a very gendered sport, one where gender issues are very much in the forefront as the IAAF, the sport’s ruling body, tries to figure out what to do with South Africa’s Caster Semanya, a women’s 800-meter Olympic gold medalist whose gender is constantly questioned.

I would love to throw a 2-kilogram discus, used in men's competitions. But unless I transitioned medically or took testosterone injections or supplements -- probably against doping rules anyway -- I would not be able to throw it very far. So, I am content to throw the 1K discus, and compete alongside women.

That doesn’t mean that being genderqueer does not affect me in track. One of the reasons I didn’t go to a certain school was because their men’s and women’s teams trained separately. That’s not the case at Stanford. Everyone trains together, and when we lift, everyone shares racks based on ability, not gender. We work hard and we push each other, and we recognize strength in everyone.

I was recruited by Michelle Eisenreich, Stanford’s throws coach at the time who was from Minnesota and aware of what was going on in her home state. I was in the middle of transitioning, going by C.J., but not yet Jaimi, and signing e-mails with they/them pronouns. Michelle looked at me directly and didn’t try to shove my identity under the rug. I’m thankful for that. But, before I arrived, she became head coach at Princeton.

You just start over. Fortunately, none of that was an issue here. Chris Miltenberg, Stanford’s Franklin P. Johnson Director of Track and Field, approached me. He said, “I’ve got your back. What can I do for you? Let’s figure this out together.”

I told him, “Use my pronouns, use my name, respect me, and I’m good.”

Our new throws coach, Amin Nikfar, came from Southeastern Louisiana. A Bay Area native, he was excited to learn. His message was: I don’t know this. Teach me. Let’s have some conversations.

Now, I’m in my third season at Stanford and I’ve been blessed to have some talented and fun teammates. Valarie Allman, the U.S. national champion last year who graduated last June, was stone cold in competition. At the same, time, she was like a supportive friendly big sister. She is a sweetheart and never changed at all. That’s the type of relationship I would like to carry out to my teammates. I want to be able to provide support and not be an overwhelming personality.

Lena Giger’s the same way. She’s one of the top shot putters in the nation – third at NCAA outdoors last year. Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, which I would say is a good thing. She’s so feisty and funny and technically knowledgeable. I’ve learned so much from watching her and listening to her.

I train mostly with Lena, Landon Ellingson and Jake Koffman, but all the throwers have great camaraderie. When we lift together, we push each other and cheer for each other. That’s how it should be.

I still have moments of doubt and loneliness, but I feel comfortable here, especially in the Stanford queer community, where I feel like I can really open up and be myself. They’re on it. They know.

I hope that my story and those like another gender queer athlete, G Ryan, who swam on the women’s team at Michigan will help others understand that they are not alone. We all have felt that way, but understand there is no need to go it alone. Stanford, for one, has its own trans resource guide. There are many great resources out there to educate yourself. As much as I would like to answer questions, it can’t all be on me. That burden is too great.

But I also know there are a lot of places where I would not be safe, countries I cannot travel to. I have several friends on campus who were disowned for being gay. It’s preposterous. When you’re separate from it, it’s easy to ask, How can that ever happen? But it happens every day.

I’m lucky to be in a world where I had my mom and where I get to go to Stanford. It’s a place where I can be a competitor, where I can help direct a play, join the band, or take a class like Energy Efficient Buildings. I can do and be so many things, and I can also be me.

During the hard times, I always knew I would find something better, and not necessarily through sports or college. It just had to be a possibility. A hope of something, somewhere. It could have been a mile away, or 2,000. But I knew it was there.

Even paradise isn’t perfect. Here at Stanford, I can be mis-gendered 13 times in an hour. Each time, it’s like a shove to the ground.

When it’s just one little shove, you think, That was uncomfortable, but I can stand back up. When you get shoved to the ground 13 times, you’re going to want to fight someone ... intellectually, of course. It’s frustrating.

In those situations, my job is to take a deep breath, be my authentic self, and use my words.

Your job is not to shove me.

All I ask: Respect me and respect the struggle. And we’ll be fine.