(or, coming out but not really)
We don’t talk much anymore.
She had a tumblr years ago. They introduced themselves as nonbinary, and showed a photo of their femme self, and one of their masc self.
I followed because she was my friend. I think she followed me back.
I wondered why they didn’t tell me.
I didn’t bring it up.
Nearly ten years later we meet, after not visiting for more than a year (they live halfway across the country now, not just on the other side of town).
In a pizza shop, she goes to the bathroom and I’m left at the table with her partner.
“They’re thinking of going to mortuary school.”
I’m taken aback for a brief moment. Who is “they”? I think back to the tumblr post and assume he’s referring to my friend.
Why didn’t she tell me?
I think further back, to our first year of college, when they tell me they had known they were bi since 8th grade but never told me, because I was “super religious and straight as an arrow”.
I only went to church sometimes, dragged with my family. I wasn’t sure how straight I was, even then.
I fell into step with their partner in the conversation and agreed that would be very cool to do, and I wished I could do something like that.
I wish I could do a lot of things she’s evidently doing.
As they live their best life with a partner and friends, out and proud and unafraid, I look at activities on my local queer community center and cry, because I will never be able to go. As they come further and further out, I crawl further and further back in.
("But how does one go back in," you may ask, "if you were never out to begin with?" Ah, but I tried to come out, and was laughed at and disregarded. If my sexuality is not common enough to be on TV in earnest, it is not worth being shared, I learned.)
I cannot - I will not - deny the joy at being called “Steve” by a student, at being called a man online, at being referred to as “they”. It draws me out, further from myself, and I feel less alone, less scared, less me.
I also cannot shake the permanent sadness of never being who or what I want, and not knowing what that is. I will never be good enough for anyone, just hiding under the guise of a straight church-going girl who never left her shame and uncertainty behind. I will never find my people, never be comfortable in my skin and in what I am. I want to shake off my gender like a dirty sweater, but I want to hide under the covers and not come out.
🖤🕸🖤
Note: I used both she and they to refer to them because that's what they use. Or, that's what their partner uses to refer to them, at leaat, at least, they never...told me their preferred pronouns...
Comment