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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