In first grade,
Gay was just a word.
We didn’t know what it meant.
We just knew that boys and girls liked each other.
And that was fine with me,
Because as far as I knew, that was all I was.
In second grade,
There was a boy,
Who said he had two mothers.
I didn’t understand why,
But through all the scenarios I pondered
It never crossed my mind that maybe
They loved each other.
In third grade,
Gay was weird, unheard of.
My classmates said it was wrong.
I would get upset, and when I asked them why,
Why it was wrong to love the way you were born to,
They answered with cop-outs and stammers.
It made me feel satisfied.
In fifth grade,
Gay was… fine…
but still, nobody really understood.
Boys still liked girls,
And girls still liked boys,
Just like it had been since grade one.
The questions started
In sixth grade,
When I met a girl, who quickly became my best friend.
She was beautiful.
I would imagine her kissing me,
Smiling at me, holding my hand,
And I liked it.
‘But,’ I would ask myself, ‘I am still straight, aren’t I?”
Because that’s what I’d been my whole life.
I'd liked boys.
At the time,
These feelings didn’t bring me shame or fear,
But instead, questions and opportunity,
It was new thing about myself to explore,
And I was excited!
But.
Instead of a new era of excitement,
And exploration,
I got a kick in the stomach from an antagonizer named Reality.
I told two people that I’d liked a girl.
One friend I trusted, and one classmate I hardly knew.
That classmate told two more people,
and one of them stopped me in the classroom on our way back from lunch, saying,
“Is it true? That you’re…”
She didn't finish, but I knew what she had meant to say.
I told her yes.
She made a disgusted face and walked away.
That day I went home crying.
For the rest of the year,
That girl’s younger brother would stop me on my way to the buses every day and tell me,
“People are saying that you’re a lesbian.”
And at the time, it hurt.
Because in sixth grade, gay was an insult.
In seventh grade, I didn't talk about my sexuality.
The feelings for my friend had faded,
And I could be straight again.
I swooned over boys with all the other girls,
Thinking that I'd just gone through a phase.
That summer,
I moved away.
Away from everything and everyone I'd ever known.
Waves of anxiety beat away whatever flimsy dam I'd built between me and my sexuality
And I was terrified.
The concept of being anything other than straight was crazy,
But at the same time,
I couldn't dismiss the feelings as a phase anymore.
I was confused.
I wanted an answer, so I gave myself false labels and told myself to live with it.
‘This is what you are. Just don't think about it.
Don't think about it, and maybe you'll be able to forget.’
I was never able to forget.
At that point, it wasn’t even the feelings that were the problem anymore.
It was the not knowing.
I wanted something to call myself
I needed a label.
But none of them fit me quite right.
In eighth grade,
The anxious waves calmed to simple tides.
I still had no label,
I still hadn't fallen for a girl since my best friend,
And I never, ever talked about it to anyone else,
But I had learned to control my thoughts a bit more.
One day, I'm talking online.
A girl posts on the chat,
Saying something about being gay.
I join the conversation eagerly.
Tentative to give a label to myself,
I don’t say outright who I am
Because I felt I would be lying no matter
What I said.
And in our DMs I threw out identities
That almost applied to me
But the great thing about digital faces
Is that their eyes don’t scathe.
And through our conversations
She taught me things that I’d never learned
Living in a monochromatic world,
Because she was the only one who was able to understand.
Now, I’d lived my whole life being told,
‘You are never alone,’
But I was never able to believe it.
Until this girl brought consolation to my isolation
And showed me that I wasn’t alone.
That there are so many others who understand.
Who understand what it feels like to question yourself,
To look at everything you’ve ever been told and think, “but that isn't me.”
People who understand what it's like to be confused
And scared,
Because the mold that forms the world
Wasn’t made for us.
They understand what it’s like
To live your life thinking that your shape is wrong.
“I should fit somewhere. Why can’t I fit?”
But she also taught me to be unapologetically myself
How to need no label but the one saying “me.”
How to take a knife,
And instead of using it to carve yourself into a different shape,
Use it to make a mold
That you can lay in comfortably.
And now I know.
I know that straight was never what I was supposed to be,
It’s just what I had seen my whole life
I’m not a cow that needs a tag punched through my ear, just because others want an explanation of who I am
There's no right way to be queer,
And right now, I'm doing great!
Gay is not an insult - now, if anything, I'll take it as a compliment!
I am not strange.
I am not abnormal.
I am not broken.
And I can finally love the way I was born to.
I'm bi.
It took me so long to be able to say those two tiny words.