I know that no one will probably ever see this and the person it's about most definitely will never see this so it doesn't matter.
My very first crush/relationship was with a wonderful person. We'll call him Tom. We were maybe 11? 12? Like right in there somewhere.
He was so kind and hilarious. I wanted to be his best friend more than anything in the world. I loved his sister and his mother and his father. They were all also amazingly kind and funny.
Somewhere in the mix of things, I accidently divulged to my parents that I was queer. I didn't have words for it yet. I had never seen a gay couple or anyone different like that. I told them that I really liked boys, but I also really liked girls.
They hated that and slowly their resentment for me started showing.
Back to the story at hand - Tom and I were going to kiss.
We talked about it for days. I was hyped. He was hyped. We'd never been kissed before.
And then... When we got right down to it, I couldn't do it.
Something inside me told me not to.
I broke up with him a couple days later. He begged me for a reason that I was way too afraid to give him. He cried and then I went home and cried.
I had also started feeling dysphoric. Again, I had no words for it. But I knew something about being a girl didn't feel right.
And Tom liked girls. And Tom's parents were religious. And it was starting to click in my head that it was something that needed to be hidden.
That something was terribly wrong with me and I didn't want Tom to hate me for something I didn't know how to fix within myself.
I tried to apologize to Tom right before we started high school. But he refused to talk to me and that felt fair.
We went to classes together, shared friends, dated other people. We wrote poems that were so strikingly similar teachers thought we had collaborated. We went to an all state program and both of us got in together. Twice. We sang our school alma mater at our senior graduation together. I went to college with his sister, we had our own dorm rooms that shared a jack and jill bathroom.
Once, I went through the line at a local grocery store and looked up to find Tom behind the register. He tried to say something to me and I was so deeply in shock, I turned around and walked away.
Through all of that - we never spoke a single word to one another.
But I'll be honest... It was the right thing to do. He deserved a beautiful wife and children and everything good in the world. And the last time I checked up on him, he had that. I still hope he gets everything he ever wished for.
And he would have never had any of that with me weighing him down. I didn't figure out I was trans until I was almost 18 and then I DEEPLY suppressed it until I decided to come out at almost 27 years old.
I would have destroyed his entire world.
If you're out there, Tom...
I'm so deeply sorry for everything I put your little heart through then. I want you to know that I think you're an amazing person and I'm so glad you found happiness.
Also, sorry I turned out to be a dude and a flaming queer. 😅
I still fixate on all those experiences that we shared. I always wondered why it happened that way.
I'm an atheist and I don't believe in fate. But maybe the universe was trying to tell us something. 🤷🏻
Maybe someday we'll be friends.
Anyways, have a good one.
