Every person has too many shades and nuances to be defined in several names. You can’t possibly know what the person is like. An acquaintance of mine once said, "So you’re a tomboy!"

I’ve read up on this term, and I think, well, yes, I love football, I dress masculine sometimes, I can be rude or defiant, I can curse, but then this term cuts off the rest of my personality.

I think I’ve had such an interest in getting to the bottom of it, rather than being satisfied with standard answers, since I was a child.

My childhood passed in the village. I finally moved to Kharkiv only five years ago. I live alone for the last year. Before that, I lived with my parents, then with my boyfriend, and only now I’m starting to understand what it means to be independent, to do what you like, to make your choices, not to compromise because another person feels the right to control me.

The process of researching the way I work, recycling various ideas, is still ongoing. Some ideas about love, family, the world, my role, my behaviour can be rejected at once. It quickly becomes clear that this is not the case for me, and something is still underneath where I can’t feel it. But now I feel more complete than ever.

My family system looked like this: an intelligent family, a hard-working father and a homely mother. The house is always tidy; everyone should look decent in public. But it’s a mask. We had little contact with my father. One day he did not know which class I was in. My mother, on the contrary, kept trying to control me, to impose her opinion and pressure me to agree. I often feel that my parents are genuinely concerned about me. They are not heartless tyrants, but most often the care looks like pointing out my mistakes.

Already self-sufficient in some areas, I was still afraid to experiment with my appearance because I knew that I would come to visit my parents and listen to criticism that I wasn’t living properly. Now that I’m out of a relationship, this has become a trigger for me to become myself. I feel the strength to confront my parents as well, to get out of co-dependence with them.

On the one hand, I was interested in watching my father’s work (he's an auto mechanic). He could talk and show what he was doing. On the other hand, I played football, went to competitions and listened to his annoyance about it. My mother was selling cosmetics and tried to involve me in every way. I gradually got used to the fact that so many products were needed for an appropriate look.

I remember that there were a lot of demands for clothes. I also am quite selective about clothes. This selectivity means that I will no longer compromise. I will choose exactly what I need. It also works as a reminder about the legacy of my parents because they paid a lot of attention to my appearance.

There should be a good daughter in a good family. I got good grades after ninth grade, so my parents gave me a gold chain. I don’t care about such things. I didn’t need it, but in my parents' language, it was praise. There was no other way to show appreciation; love was expressed in material objects.

There was also food for love and family cosiness. Such a need has always been encouraged. It was possible to get immediate attention and sympathy if you said you were hungry. If you cried, it wouldn’t be clear to them. They didn’t consider it worth responding. That’s the kind of relationship currency we had.

Now I’ve understood what’s happening to me, and before I was just confused. I get an outburst of aggression, I get scared, I still don’t understand what I’m guilty of, I’m in shock, and nothing happens anymore. I’m left with this shock that has nowhere to go. Unprocessed emotions accumulate and are put off "for later" and so on until it is no longer possible to navigate your feelings.

A similar situation occurred when, for example, I shared my fears and in return, received a 'Ten Steps to Success' piece of advice. I hadn’t known for a long time what emotional devaluation was, so I was just confused by such inconsistencies.

I remember how I learned to manipulate attention and unknowingly defend sensitive spots that could be hit by sudden criticism. It’s like a game of hide-and-seek as a child: I thought that if I merged with the environment, they wouldn’t notice me. And it worked with the parents. If you don’t make any sudden moves, you can go unnoticed. If you do, you can get ahead of yourself and use a random topic as a distraction and avoid another round of comments and teases.

Now I use it differently: I choose when I want to blend in, and when I want to be an irritant to someone’s brain and attract attention. I like to notice the same techniques in art.

Listening to my inner voice is difficult, starting with the embodiment in which I still have a lot of shame. The magazines and TV shows of that time also broadcast that a woman must always be perfect, smooth and sparkling to be worth living next to other people. I didn’t feel like I could meet those requirements. I would come back from football and listen to comments that it is unacceptable for girl’s feet to be so dirty. It still seems to me that my feet are always dirty, that they cannot be cleaned and made clean enough. A neurotic idea that makes you avoid unnecessary contact with your body.

Now I’m trying to assimilate my body sense and change the meanings that were put into it earlier. I dare to take pictures, look at myself, try to accept and convey to others the idea that the body, even naked, can be just a body. It can be beautiful outside the context of sexualisation and objectification. In this way, I get out of the image of the "good girl" and gain control of my body and say that I can define my limits and get out of them myself.

I photograph myself both when I am thinner and when I gain weight, with all the folds and imperfections because the body is not just about sexuality or a tool for someone’s aesthetic satisfaction.

My identity, in general, is about expression and being able to communicate through it with the rest of the world how to combine and broadcast a complete image: how to combine softness and hardness, vulnerability and roughness. I need to retain some elements of conventional femininity, some elegance, but to balance them with other attributes such as short haircuts and tattoos. To make it clear that you don’t have to put me in a group just by looking at how I look and what I do. When I pay attention to the way, I express myself. I also communicate with the world in the language of stereotypes, but this is the only way to give a clear idea of what I am broadcasting.

If I pay attention to relationships, it is important for me now to build friendships. So far, I have not thought about the need for a serious romantic relationship, but I need close friends. In such relationships, I appreciate an agency a lot, too. This form of contact requires involvement, so you need to be able to approach and distance yourself. To give as much as you can give freely, both ways. Because if you’re forcing yourself, there is no sincere involvement. If there is no willingness to be empathetic, then the meaning of such contact is lost.

As for children, I understand that I am unlikely to be ready to have them in the nearest future. I need a lot more time and attention to my inner child to build a close and safe relationship with myself.