alien-above

[alien-above]

HEARTBREAKING: Poor girl has to get out of the soft warm bed even though she is so so so so comfy

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like there comes a point where you think something is fundamentally wrong with you. and then it turns out it’s just Friday and you haven’t washed your hair in three days and maybe you’re also just a little lonely and the combination of all three of those things is whittling a hole into your chest every time you breathe. but also the sun’s up. and you’ve survived everything so far, so you’ll survive this too, even if it hurts, even if you have to survive it many times.

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don't blame me... don't blame me...

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The feeling of wanting to be cared for but having had to be hyper-independent & hypervigilant your entire life sucks

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I say no worries a lot for someone who worries 101% of the time

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— Alice Notley, from an interview conducted c. October 2017

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not flirting with anyone anymore pull me toward you by my red string of fate or fuck off

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its about this 

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The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–1947

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My second coming out.

I think I was 18 when I came out as a lesbian. I don’t remember definitive moments of telling my friends. In many ways they knew before I did. Maybe it was all the drunk rambling about hot women when I lost my inhibitions. It must’ve been, because for all of my teenage years, I had been hanging up posters of male tv show actors and male band members and declaring they were attractive. I remember one afternoon where I was looking through a Kerrang magazine and I was gushing over how hot the lead singer of All Time Low was. Or maybe it was the guitarist. I really can’t remember. And at that time I genuinely thought that I was attracted to whichever one it was, and any other man that I had talked about. I really did. Because being attracted to men, being straight, was the norm and I had never questioned if I was actually feeling that way, or just blindly going along with what everyone else thought. And I suppose at 14/15/16/17 I had never experienced true attraction so I really had no way of actually knowing back then. And maybe that’s weird. Maybe I was weird. Or maybe, again, I just never had the time and space to consider the other gender or any gender, consider who I was.

But at around 18 I had sort of a revelation about women, without really understanding what it meant. Suddenly it was female actors and musicians I was obsessing over, talking about constantly and hanging up pictures of. And that felt right. It really did. I was finally certain about what attraction felt like. And when my brain and emotions caught up to what that meant for me, there just became casual talk in my friend group about me being a lesbian. Never any judgment or doubtful questions from their side. It just fell into my place. And I was so grateful and relieved to be accepted, that life just sailed on after that. But I also never did a lot of “soul searching” about it. Honestly the process of coming out seemed to happen completely without me in a way. Suddenly it just was. And that was it. I had a label now, and that would define my future. I really wish I would’ve given myself more time. Asked for more time, grown up a bit more before settling into something that in a way was just as much a directive of who I was supposed to be, as being straight had been.

I know many people want any lgbtq+ person to know their sexuality or gender when they start feeling and especially expressing being outside of the given norm. As if knowing a persons label restores the balance of things and the world makes sense again. It’s like they’re saying “well if you’ve gotta be different then you at least owe us an explanation of exactly what is so different about you”.

Fuck that. Whether you’re 5 or 12 or 25 or 50 or 90, you don’t owe anyone anything, you don’t have to explain, you don’t have to cram yourself into a nice little box with a nice little label, just so other people know where to store you.

I know that some people think that it’s ridiculous and attention seeking if a person decides to not label themselves, like it’s trendy to not only “want” to be different but also to “decide” that you’re so different that you’re not comfortable with these “perfectly well-fitted labels that everyone else can use so why can’t you, and just give us some peace”

Some people find power in labels and that’s amazing. Other people find just another set of expectations and dictations of who you’re supposed to be and who you’re allowed to be.

And without knowing it at the time, I had let myself be put into a box, before I had even come to terms with who I was.

I told my family in quite an unexpected way. As a protest against their generally homophobic talk. I wasn’t by any means ready to come out, I had barely been figuring things out, very barely confident enough to be myself. But I pushed myself to do it one night, because I was sick of hearing them talk like that, and a part of me thought that if they knew I wasn’t straight, then it would force them to have to reevaluate their thinking and speaking.

That night, that coming out, it wasn’t for me, it was for every other person out there, sat at a dining table feeling ashamed and rejected. It was a challenge in a way. One that I won, my family doesn’t speak like that anymore, they support me and I like to think that they’ve grown to see the world in a different way as the years have gone by.

But it happened. I was now out of the closet to the people closest to me. And I was a lesbian.

I was 18 or 19 back then. Now I’m 27. And I feel stuck and ashamed and uncertain. I’m hiding. And I’m so terrified that my closest friends will think differently of me, if I ever tell them that I’m not sure. I’m so scared that I will let them down, that they will feel betrayed or that they will think that I’ve been lying to them for all these years (and I guess that part is true), that I’m a fraud who was just desperate to be a lesbian.

I came out years ago.

But then 2 days ago I watched Red White & Royal blue, and season 2 of Heartstopper in the same day.

And I got this sort of pressing sadness in my chest, this overwhelming need to be able to be myself, because i knew and I know that I’m not free, I’m not out of the godforsaken closet in the way that is who I am. I think I’m bi, actually.

And what a terrible shame. Terrible, terrible shame. Shame on me. How dare I be the person who proves that every lesbian can be turned by a good-looking man? How dare I ask people to have to change their perception of me? How dare I be 27 and not know for certain who I am?

It’s messing with my head so much that I’m afraid I can never be honest. It’s messing with me so much that I feel like I’ve been slowly drowning in a cage for years and now there’s barely any air left. It feels like if I don’t get those words out soon then I’m not gonna make it. It’s so heavy.

And being openly bisexual, from what I’ve gathered, is not a fun rollercoaster to be on. You’ll be questioned and analyzed and doubted, you’ll have to constantly stand up for your own sexuality because it’s too fluid for pea-sized brains to understand, every romantic or sexual experience you have will be either a defeat or a success in the lgbtq+ community, you’ll be sexualized, you’ll be asked to cross your own boundaries because it’s “hot”, you’ll be seen as more promiscuous, and probably so many more things I can’t think of right now.

Part of the reason I also haven’t told anyone yet, is the simple reason that it’s easier to brush men off that you don’t want attention from, by saying that you’re a lesbian, so they’re wasting their time. It’s an easy out I’ve used many times. And I’ve felt so wrong about it every time because it’s simply not true. And what a fucked up world, that it’s easier to throw the lesbian card than it is to simply say no and have that be respected. But that’s an entirely different talk.

Am I really ready to face all of this, to have that conversation with friends and family, to admit that I’m not a lesbian and that I’m still figuring things out? To have to explain what to me is very personal, about how attraction works for me? To have to then also open up about the differences I feel with romantic and sexual attraction? To explain that I’m also not quite sure if maybe I’m somewhere on the demisexual spectrum as well? And is it too much to ask for them to understand that particular part as well? To have to lay bare every single moment of confusion and realization that has led me to have to speak up to be free? In a way it feels like I’m going to court and I might lose. Well I feel quite certain that I’ll lose and that for a very long time, I’ll be stuck in that courtroom until I’ve explained enough, to peoples satisfaction.

As if this isn’t about me wanting to be happy, it’s about making sure that the people around me are happy with who I am.

I just want to be me. I want to not have to be careful about what I say, I want to be able to gush as much about Henry Cavill as I can gush about Anya Chalotra, I want the freedom to fall in love with a person, without having to stress about whether or not it’s a woman. I want to be able to talk about attraction without hiding half of me, without suffocating myself in the process.

I want to be allowed to be 27 and still be figuring things out.

But still, I’m so afraid of what will happen. And it’s simply just not fucking fair that I have to be afraid. I have never even written about this before, too afraid to put actual words to how I’ve been feeling for so long, too afraid of making it real. But I’m taking a chance, and posting it here, hoping that maybe it will be a step on the way.

If anyone reads this, then please be kind ❤️

[alien-above]

Happy September 1st!

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+9 brendon urie requested by anonymous

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harry + black background