‍Contradiction

Tears travel down my cheeks, as I rest my head against the window of a bus that is taking me away from her. I had given her my bracelet, as a part of myself for her to remember. I was around 13 years old then, and it was during that bus ride home, when I first told myself that I could not be gay, “not in this lifetime”, I thought.

Eventually, I did come out, years later to family and friends. But the thoughts in my brain still make me feel like a huge contradiction. It’s hard to explain, but I invite you to navigate through these streams of thought, in the hopes that more people will understand how society and social norms can influence queer youth.

So Hi, I like to go by she/her pronouns. I don’t like my name and on most days I don’t like myself.
I don’t like to admit that I have a lot of queer friends, but at the same time, those are the people I like to spend most of my time with. They make me feel understood.

In the presence of strangers, I will probably turn down the volume of my queer music, abruptly stop a conversation regarding my sexuality, and hide my phone when opening social media in fear of ending up on a post of queer representation.
I think I’d be a good mother, but I often question if I should have children, or if they’d deserve a father figure.

I hate stereotypes, yet it's what I use to assume a person’s sexuality. Cuffed jeans, nose piercings, rings, vans, converse or Dr Martens. It's almost like I’ve got it memorised, a pre-made list that disregards the spectrum, the fluidity and the beauty of queerness. I usually go for the total opposite. I find myself falling for the most “heterosexual looking” women. On one hand, It makes me feel more dysphoric. I find myself trying to fit in the binary: maybe she’d like me if I were male, my chest flat, and my shoulders wider. I wouldn’t be enough, because maybe she does need a man to hold her and love her. But it also makes me feel safe, the reassurance that I will never be with her, that I will never have to face that meeting with my parents, the ugly stares and the silent whispers that could follow us around.

So to my next girlfriend, I feel like I should apologise in advance. Sorry. I’d love to hold your hand, to give you gentle kisses and surprise you with nice little picnics at the park. I want you to know that I think we are beautiful, and we are brave. But I also need you to understand that I am afraid. I am afraid of all I am. I drown in this confusion, that makes me tear down the pictures of myself where I feel unrecognisable, makes me wear a sports bra that is too tight for my chest and leaves thick red lines under my breasts when I take it off every night, before going to sleep.

See, I found comfort in the label “queer”. Not only because of its current meaning but because it once meant “strange” or “peculiar”, which reassure me on the days in which, I feel like a freak.