I’ve been trying to put into words why byler in particular has burrowed so deeply into my core.
I related so strongly to Will, a poor kid from an abusive family who was too obviously queer and bullied. I was SA’d as a 12yo, and went through the horrors of PTSD as a result, feeling life was split into before and after. And like I was stuck, watching all my friends move on as I tried to figure out why the things that made me happy once just couldn’t anymore.
And I related to Will because I had a Mike. My best friend, for whom I played the relationship counselor despite being in love and knowing to a certainty that our relationship was deeper, more precious, and more real than anything my Mike would ever find in all the men she dated. My Mike who initiated all the intimacy, and hated herself for wanting it, and punished us both for needing it. My Mike who I still love even now, nearly ten years since we last spoke, and who once loved me more fiercely than anyone else has ever dared. My Mike, who I never pursued because I couldn’t ask her to shoulder the homophobia for my sake. I couldn’t ask her to confront who she was.
And after everything I find myself sometimes doubting it. That it was real. Doubting that she loved me when she called me her soul mate. Doubting that meant anything when she couldn’t bear to have me at her wedding. Doubting that the tears she cried when I came out to her, hinting that she knew we had missed our chance, were evidence of anything at all. Doubting not because we didn’t love each other more than anything, but because I have been taught, time and time again, that queer love is something that you are supposed to doubt.
And that’s what gets me about byler and this queerbaiting. Because it mirrors that same doubt that erases the most important relationship in my life, boiling down to fantasy and delusion. They built up a friendship so deep and so tender, intentionally over the course of ten years, and now they ask me once more to believe that I’m just a queer person reading into things. That it really never was meant to be.
So. The Queerbait Brothers can get fucked.