sometimes when they ask you how did you know you were gay, there's a long list of ways that the truth presented itself. this makes it feel like there's a beginning and an end, some kind of dawn that burned into you. as if you walked through the door and were a changed person, a split that happened where once you were straight.
when you were six or maybe seven, you realized the game of pretend you'd been playing would resolve in two princesses kissing. you had a strange and distorted sensation then, something akin to panic, as if you'd been caught doing something terrible. you forced a response to the idea: i am not supposed to do that yet, and shivered the thought into the abyss. in your house, did you even really know the term queer? somehow you already knew it wasn't right of you. it was something for adults, the way that kissing boys wasn't. kissing boys was acceptable, even cute.
in the books you read - and you read so many of them, were particularly fond of ones with dragons or cats or wolves in them - sometimes you'd be taken aback by certain instances of "romance." all of a sudden, the girl and the boy would end up together, and it was almost as if you'd somehow missed a chapter. in one book, the girl had been bullied by this boy, had to cut off her precious hair (that he stuck gum into!), had professed repeatedly to hating him - and still, the two of them were together in the last few pages. you'd flipped back and forth a few times, scanning for something you'd just missed, some reason that was evidently subvocal or understood. for a long time you avoided realistic fiction after that, annoyed by plots that resolved with but then he realized he loved her.
this was not an outlier, but a commonality. this of course was the 90's and the early aughts. women would roll their eyes and stay with their cheating partner. often two people would wind up together that you felt had no purpose to love each other. you watched the female main character disappoint the female best friend - over and over - just for the sake of a boy that wasn't even interesting. you learned that sisterhood was maybe fickle and fragile - that the desire for a boy should conquer all. you couldn't help that it all felt - even then - somehow distant and somewhat wrong.
a long time from now, tracing patterns on the tattooed leg of a beautiful woman, you'll both be talking about how neither of you really understood why everyone was obsessed with justin beiber. so that was a sign, you both laugh. you'd both feigned interest in some boyband or another. coming out was a long process for both of you: both the slow realization as well as the eternal again-and-again cycle of admitting it eventually to friends and family and the workforce. both of you have been asked - when did you know?
technically you didn't "know" until you were 28. these days, though - looking back at the little girl you were - you think to yourself i was trying to tell myself something and i couldn't listen. this breaks your heart a lot of the time, but some part of that is actually very warm to you - you carried your past self all this way. she always knew. you got her here so she could see the comfort of the morning you're in bed with a beautiful girl. so that you could know, too. you, antlered and stable now - you saved that timid, shaking foal.
how beautiful to think some part of you has always been like this. that you've always been whole.
kianamaiart
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
origamiaround
2087
amandla
dailybridgerton
