queer

I need help getting closure. What was it about me that wasn't enough for her? I don’t know if I didn’t give enough or if I did something wrong at some point...

It seemed like only a matter of time. After marriage equality was legalized by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision last June, the LGBT community both celebrated this historic victory and quietly girded its loins for the inevitable — the wave of same-sex breakups.

Something had clicked in my head. Suddenly I didn't give a shit when life began or whether or not a fetus counts as a “baby.” I was overwhelmed by the new-found knowledge that pregnancy is unfairly invasive in every single way.

If you believe in bodily autonomy and consent, folks should get to consent (or not) to the process of gestation. Full stop. No caveats.

Faced by the extreme pressure to conform to impossible beauty ideals, I followed my instincts (and my budding feminism) and rejected them wholesale. I wasn’t going to play like that; I wasn’t going to let my gender require that I wear makeup or perform a certain way.

There was never a lightbulb moment in which I realized, “Hey! I’m bisexual!” I actually spent several years with a growing sense that something about me wasn’t quite the norm.

When I told my friends I was gay, the majority of them said, "I knew it! I kept wondering why you wouldn't tell me." But they never made me feel like I could.

It was in my second year of college that a girl expressed sexual interest in me. It took me a month to realize that what I thought were hangouts were actually dates. It took me another month to realize I wanted them to be dates. As I realized I wanted her to like me, I slipped back into my old routine — my makeup got more advanced and my hair was always straightened. I still thought that to be attractive, I had to be as feminine as possible. I’d been a hardcore ally for a decade at that point, but had no idea about the politics of beauty within the queer community; I thought I was stepping back into my old role.

I vividly recall standing in front of the bathroom mirror looking at myself as I’d done countless times as a childless person. As myself. As the woman I’d always been until days before. It was like stumbling upon an identical twin I never knew I had — the same, so well-known, yet so alien and unfamiliar.