honestly there are so many lesbians out there who know in their hearts what they want their lives and relationships to look like but they think it’s not something they get to have— only “lesbians” get to have it and they’re “not lesbians” so they have to swallow the knot in their throat whenever they think about it and tell themselves it’s some sort of appropriation or fetishization to even think about it, and so they hide the most around the very people they most need to be able to process their feelings with because they are too scared to overstep. I went through so many years as a young person thinking I was simply not allowed to be a lesbian. You either were or you weren’t and I didn’t fit the definition I knew so that was that. I remember the revelation I had when I read an essay by a creative writing professor at my college who had dated men as a teenager and then dated a woman and decided she never wanted to date men again because it was just so much better to her. I remember suddenly realizing it was not something you were allowed to be if you were born that way— every single lesbian at some point needed to decide to claim what she wanted for her own life and pursue it. When I first got tumblr it was shortly after coming out and I chose this username because the most important thing to me at that moment in my life was to be someone who could help give people the encouragement they needed to feel allowed to claim the lives they want dearly to live. And I think that’s why I’m also very personally defensive of trans girls (& esp trans lesbians) on here who talk & joke about those who might be eggs. Like the loneliness and alienation was so real for me and I’m not even affected by transmisogyny. To have someone return for you and tell you explicitly that you’re allowed to claim this for yourself if you ever want to is an enormous act of compassion and love. Any portrayal of it as anything else rings so immediately false to me. So many lesbians need to be told we are allowed to live the life we desire before we can, because the entire culture presents lesbianism as something inherently selfish or cruel—to men, to families, to womanhood itself. It’s so easy to feel like you don’t have the right to live as a lesbian unless the alternative is literally suicide and sometimes not even then. To have someone who has been in that place let you know that you can simply choose and it’s a wonderful thing to do and doesn’t hurt anyone and adds to the richness of humanity is absolutely life changing. You can decide to live the life you want. No matter what your past is. No matter what you could theoretically tolerate. No matter how ignorant about history or lgbtq spaces you are. No matter what you look like. None of that matters. What matters is what you want your life to be.
