There are plenty of things I wish I had time travel for, in order to undo my past. In an attempt to miss that long-winded conversation, I will narrow in and simplify to knowledge that would have helped me when I was first coming out. Scratch that, and step back to me even beginning to understand more complex pieces of my identity.
First, I was like: Easy! Lesbian. But, even that was scary in the area I live in. I was made fun of for being gay before I fully came to the conclusion on my own. After that I came out to my mom, for the first time, as bisexual. I never admitted that I only thought I like boys because of the heteronormative society we live in, and therefore I must be subconsciously ashamed to be gay. Which I was. It is pretty hard to avoid that when you grow up in rural Virginia and being Latinx from a strictly Catholic family. Both of which communities can rewrite the books on themselves. I am trying to say I understand. It has taken me years to identify and feel comfortable with my queerness as a genderfluid nonbinary pansexual. Maybe those seem like big words, but labels are comforting to me. Some people make fun of how many labels there are and say things like, “how am I supposed to keep track of them?” The truth is, you can’t always. I read up on as much as I can, but the important thing is if something tells me they use this term I respect it. Lesbians are valid. Genderqueer people are valid. Demisexuals and aromantics are sooooo valid. I wish someone reassured me of that. I’ve had a girl argue with me that there is not such thing as pansexual. Long story short she said there were only bisexual and panromantics because of schematics. But guess what? I still can say I’m pansexual. No one can take that away from me. At the same time: You don’t need a label. You can use queer or gay as umbrella terms, plenty of people do. Being proud of your identity doesn’t mean you have to have a word for it. Be proud of yourself, in whatever way that means for you. You are whatever you say you are (eg. You can be bisexual and only have dated girls).
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Who Am I?Hi there! I'm Whit, my pronouns are they/them, and I write a lot.
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Painting by Whit Acrylics on masonite April 20th, 2019 Words are a Quaker saying. George Fox? |