Coming out...

 

You’re 8 years old when you watch your first Keira Knightley movie. It’s the end of art class, and you’re waiting for your mother to pick you up and the art teacher suggests you watch a movie with her. You sit there as you are smitten seeing Keira play the beautiful role of Elizabeth Bennet and that sticks to you forever.

You’re 10 when you hear other girls talking about boys. Being in an all-girls school, it is, boys are in fact, the forbidden topic. The word crush nestles itself in a whisper among everyone’s lips, as if saying it out loud is a crime. Your mother pulls you aside one night, where she tells you about mother nature’s monthly visits called periods, and how once it starts, it signifies being a woman. She tells you that you’ll experience changes in your body as well as your mind. She tells you that this is the age you start becoming interested in the opposite gender.

You’re 11 when you experience your first crush. It is a guy you attend a class with, and you’re simply smitten with how beautiful he looks. He’s smart too, which is a plus. You keep dreaming of him all the time, even going so far and silly as to spend a future with him. You nurture this crush for two years, finally deciding to confess when you’re 12.  You jump from one crush to another after that, as your mother has told you, it’s normal to have interests in the opposite gender.

You’re 13 when you first fall in love with an older girl at your school. You call it love, because it’s nothing like you’ve ever experienced before. It’s thrilling, exhilarating, while at the same time, some part of you hates yourself for being so unnatural. You keep trying to convince yourself that you’re straight––like you don’t think of her smile, or wonder how her skin would feel under your fingertips. You definitely don’t think of how beautiful she looks under the daylight or her soft looking lips that you’re dying to kiss.  You try to get your shit together and tell yourself that it’s very heterosexual of you to want to kiss a girl, thinking it could be beyond that is definitely abysmal and weird.

You’re 15, when the lockdown happens. You’re forced to stay inside your homes and attend classes that don’t even make sense anymore. You’re used to pretending to be the perfect daughter for your parents but sometimes you feel the mask slipping. You meet new people online, you get new perspectives, and you’re finally forced to face the feelings you’d tried to bury not so long ago. You begin to hate yourself, wanting to tear into your skin, rip yourself apart and punish yourself for even thinking such unholy things. The thought lingers on.

You’re 16 when you look up the  am I gay quizzes. You feel like you’ve known for a while. After a certain discussion with a friend online, you realize that apart from your first love, you’ve always looked at girls in a different way. But it doesn’t make sense, you seem to like both girls and boys. As far as you know, you can only either like girls or boys. You join an LGBTQ+ server on discord to gain some insight, and you try out a bunch of different labels that keeps your mind at peace at knowing you belong somewhere. It’s lonely to be different.

You soldier on with these thoughts, you realize that maybe being different is not that bad. You begin watching more shows that involve gay people and you simply hope to find a semblance of similarity with them.

You’re 17 when the lockdown ends. The last two remaining years of your school life have been spent behind a screen and you’re glad that you get to spend the last two months with your friends. Before it all ends, you finally decide to come out to your friends, not wanting to keep any lies in between. Most of your friends accept it, and you block those who don’t. You’ve suffered far enough.

You’re 18 when you’re finally off to college. You’re finally open about your sexuality, discarding all labels because now they suffocate you. You’re at that stage again where you think something is wrong with you, but this time you feel like you’re under constant scrutiny of the world. But you decide it head on, having had enough of everything.

You’re 19, and something really bizarre happens to you. It's just a funny memory at this point really. You start liking a girl, and you start liking a guy. Later on, you find out they're dating. You can't help but laugh a little at the irony of the situation, honestly, you've achieved the 'peak bisexuality' they talk about in fiction. Both the crushes pass though, thankfully, it would be really awkward if it stayed.

You're 20, and in your final year of college. Everything seems so surreal because it seems like yesterday when you entered college. It's not like your doubts about being accepted has been quelled, some people at college can be really mean to the out and about individuals. But you're mature now, right? You can fight, if required.

You just hope for the best when 21 arrives. 

(Inspired by VE Schwab's essay)