Dear Queerantine,
Let’s give space to our stories
The first time I realized I might be queer was in January 2020 when I watched a series of LGBTQ TikToks on YouTube (I know, such an interesting discovery story). I kept watching them, and came to the conclusion that I was bi. I did all sorts of things, like listening to Sweater Weather for hours to see how it emotionally impacted me, to prove to myself that I was indeed bi, and not just a weird straight girl.
In April, I came out to my mom, and then cried in my room for 3 hours. A few months later, I realized that I might only like girls. I then had another identity crisis over this, and eventually started identifying as a lesbian. I then remembered that I also like nonbinary people, so did that make me bisexual again for liking more than one gender? (News flash, it didn’t.) I looked into this for about 3 more weeks before finding out that lesbians can/do indeed like nonbinary people, and I’ve identified as a lesbian ever since.
Now moving along to the gender confusion part of this story. I always identified as cis my entire life, because I thought that I genuinely liked she/her pronouns, but it turns out I only liked them because they were the easiest to use. I found this out and then started using she/they pronouns. I then tried out object neopronouns, and found star/stars pronouns. These ones make me the happiest, but many people actively hate object neopronouns, or don’t know how to use them. I barely know how to use them myself.
That’s where they/them comes into the equation. These make me the happiest while still being fairly easy to use. I now identify as a nonbinary lesbian. I’ve had a few more small identity crises along the way (what if I’m actually a very confused cis person who’s made a horrible mistake?), but that’s a story for another time.
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We know from personal experience that desire is complicated. And feelings often strike well before we have words to describe them.
Our goal with Dear Queerantine is to make space for these words, in all their rawness, beauty, and intersectionality. We can’t be what we can’t see, and it’s hard to express what we don’t know we can feel.
We want this to grow into a collaborative resource for all of us, now and in the future. But we need your stories first.
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