INCESSANT PAINS
Dear Diary,
It wasn’t easy growing up with everyone at school thinking I was a lesbian. I was a tomboy, on the chubby side, and preferred wearing clothes from the boys section. They were baggy and anything but pink, plus a lot more comfortable than any of the girls clothes my mom liked to try and put me in. I had thick, curly hair that I kept short, otherwise it would be too hard to deal with. The combination of all these things made it so that most strangers assumed I was a boy and my classmates, who knew I was a girl, assumed I was gay.
Stereotypes are a lot more harmful than I think a lot of people realize. I was young, grade 5, 6, 7—and I hadn’t even considered the notion of being a lesbian because I hadn’t been focused on love or crushes. I did good in school and loved to play soccer and that was what I knew.
By grade 8 I had started losing weight and dressing a bit more feminine, I even had my first real crush. A boy named Jake who liked the same punk bands as me. But despite me growing into my femininity, I also grew into my sexuality.
My first girlfriend, and the first person I had ever dated, a girl exactly my age with long hair dyed bright red. I fell for her fast, not caring enough about the notion of being gay to let it stop my heart from beating like mad when she was around. She told me she was a lesbian, so sure and so proud, and I wanted to be like her. But how could I be sure of something when I had to wonder, if I hadn’t been teased and called a lesbian for years, would I have ever even talked to the girl who was currently my girlfriend? Was I trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t what they said I was or was I trying to force it to be true because it was all that I knew?
I thought I loved her. Worst of all, I thought she loved me. But we broke up and she ghosted, and I saw she had started dating a boy, despite her telling me she was a lesbian.
The boy was three years older than us, a senior in high school, the delinquent type. I knew he didn’t make her happy and I couldn’t find a good reason she would be dating him.
A few weeks in, on a day I’ll never forget, the middle of November, she texted me in hysterics. She said she wanted to hurt herself or kill herself or just not exist at all anymore. The boy had raped her, taken the good parts of her and left the rest to rot. She became a ghost, someone completely different than the girl I had been in love with. She hasn’t been the same since, something I only know because of random check ups on her and her Instagram page.
All this to say, I wasn’t sure what love was. But I know I cared for her deeply and had never hated anyone like I hated the boy who hurt her. Maybe it’s where my deep-seated fear came from, how a man could kill a girl without stopping her heart. How taking something that’s not yours can ruin a life.
I went on to date other girls throughout high school, until I forced myself to give boys another chance. What a mistake. Months of corruption and manipulation and tears, getting cheated on, lied to, having my sexuality be invalidated, and being sexually assaulted myself. Sometimes I think I’d do anything to be able to undo that time in my life, but I know it’s what helped me learn, it’s what’s kept me safe ever since. But God, I wish we didn’t have to suffer just to learn how to avoid suffering.
I wish that people could be good, I wish we could stop taking what isn’t ours to take, I wish we could stop always needing more. I wish I didn’t need to feel loved in order to feel like I have a reason to be alive. And sometimes, I wonder if that’s how my first girlfriend feels, too. I wonder if she feels like she still has a reason to be alive. I’m 20 now, and I’ve recently started identifying as a lesbian after years of identifying as bi, and having the brief stints where I tried to convince myself I was straight. And at the end of it all, the only thing that really, really weighs down on me is how I never got to decide, I never got to figure it out for myself.
I am trying to reclaim the term lesbian into my life as something positive and good, as something I’m proud of. I am trying to see light even when I have been living in darkness for years. I hope we all find the light. I hope we all find our power.