One of the things I started doing over the winter was reading more books. Specifically a lot of young adult, queer fiction, but I'm slowly expanding to other works of literary fiction. Okay, more like listening to a lot of literary fiction. I don't have the time to actually sit and pour through pages and pages, only to read and re-read them because my mind went somewhere else, and I lose my train of thoughts. Admittedly, I've always been a poor reader, just skimming through things and saying "I'm done!" when I've barely absorbed any part of the story.
So while I'm not reading physical books, I'm listening. I started to get a better sense of character development, story arcs, all the things that writers intended for the readers to see. Honestly, how have I been missing the point? And I've also developed a better understanding of myself.
For the longest time, I've been going through the motions. And for all intents and purposes, I think I'm doing okay. Long gone are the days of teen angst and young adult self-loathing. I've found my place in the world--or so I'm led to believe. I'm not sure. But as I get a better glimpse of the characters' thought processes and internal monologues and how well they know themselves, I'm finding that I skipped through a lot of the self-introspection because of several things.
One, I cringe at the thought of my younger self. I know I should show the younger me some kindness because it's tough navigating an identity that I've been taught to discard. And I didn't have anyone to look up to or to show me what it meant to be a healthy gay person. I made a lot of mistakes, did things I'm not proud of, and reflecting on some of these things makes me physically ill. There's a saying that queer people get to experience their adolescence at a later point in time because we don't get to experience it in our teenage years. Because we hide it to protect ourselves. I don't know how true this is today, but it certainly felt true growing up in the early 2010s.
Two, I fear what I might uncover. I've gone through therapy. Three times in my life. The last therapist I saw was a gay person of color that I could relate to a lot more than the other two I've seen. He walked me through a lot of emotional development because as it turns out, I deal with things by cramming my emotions into a bottle and rationalizing things. In other words, I was emotionally stunted. The person I am today explores my emotions and understands them better. I'm still anxious and probably at least a little depressed, but I know why and where they're coming from, and I allow myself to feel them. That's not what I fear. What I'm scared to do is dig deep into my teen years and understand why I made the choices that I did or why I behaved the way I did. One of the defense mechanisms I used was to force myself to forget a lot of my youth. It carried onward, and the adult version of me today has a poor memory as a result.
And so, that's what I'm trying to do more, nowadays. Reading (listening to) a lot of literary fiction has inspired me to be more introspective. And from experiencing more of this part of me, I plan to explore the hidden facets of myself that never got to see the light of day. Everything will remain as anonymous as possible, but the thoughts and feelings will be real and transparent.
