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Special Feelings
Have you ever noticed that there's a difference between having a crush and actually liking someone?
For instance, crushes make you nervous, you never know what to say, you put them on a pedestal. You're infatuated. They come in suddenly and leave just the same.
But when you like someone, everything is different. You're comfortable around them. You can be yourself with them. You don't need to be around them constantly in order to feel secure. You know they aren't perfect, but you still have these special feelings. They develop slowly over time, and sometimes you don't even notice that they're there.
Right now, I think there's a girl that I might be developing special feelings for. I didn't realize right away because special feelings aren't as noticeable as crushes, they're far more subtle.
I've had many crushes in the past, but I know that the way I feel for her is different. In a way, that differentness is one of the things that I like most about her. It's how I know that it's real. She's been one of my closest friends since middle school. We saw each other grow; going through the same emo phase, sending each other poems, talking about mental health and existential thoughts about the universe. She's never made me nervous. I almost always know what to say around her. I see her flaws but in a way they make me admire her more. I see her pain and she's seen mine. I'm not afraid to be myself around her. I pick up her little habits and mannerisms. We share playlists and inside jokes. Every time I see the color yellow I think of her. She's a beautiful day of broken sunshine.
It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? So here's the catch. She's completely and unquestionably straight. But for me, in a way, I'm okay with that. The thing is, special feelings always belong to a special person. She is my special person, and it doesn't matter if she's in my life romantically or just as friends. The fact that she's in my life in general is enough. I'm just glad that the universe has allowed me to be someone for her, even if I'm not the one.
Still, this is just something that I felt like I needed to share, since I know that I will never be telling her about my special feelings - using my journal outlet is the next best thing.
So, for today's exit ticket, I'd like to know if anyone else has ever had special feelings for someone? Those feelings that are different from a crush, but still just as important in their own way. Did they help you build a romantic relationship? Or did things go differently?
Signing off,
~R
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When People are Temporary
Growing up, I never knew my dad, and my mom was in college when she had me, so she was often preoccupied. I spent most of my time being raised by my Grandma, Aunt, and my older cousin, Drake, (who was like a big brother figure to me). When I did spend time with my mom though, it was hardly ever just her. There was always another man with her, and the same man never stuck around for long. When I was little I thought that was the way that things were supposed to be. My goal in life should be to find a man.
At the time that I started my second kindergarten, I moved in with my Grandma permanently and she got custody. I didn't understand the situation at the time.
Starting in the first grade, every year I would try to find a boy to have a "crush on". I missed my mom. I didn't understand my mom, and yet I still wanted to be like her. I still wanted her approval. So at the age of seven I decided that my worth was measured in what boys thought of me.
That year my older-brother cousin Drake passed away in a car accident. I had never felt more alone.
In the second grade we moved to a new house (well okay, it was a mobile home), and I now had neighbors around my age. We'll refer to them as Tate and his older sister Lana. I always thought that Lana was pretty and it was cool that someone two years older than me wanted to be my friend. Eventually, however, Lana grew out of me and so I spent most of my time hanging out with only Tate. Since it was abnormal for boys and girls to be friends back then, I decided that I must have a crush on him. Lana and my friends from school would tease us and say that we were dating, and I went along with it because it made me feel cool. But eventually Tate and I stopped talking and hanging out too.
In music class, my teacher told us all that we were too young to understand feelings and crushes. She was right of course, second grade is far to young for crushes to have mattered as much as they did, but ironically, it was in her music class that I discovered my first ever real crush. We'll call her Cecily and we were seat buddies. We'd kick each other under our chairs and giggle, and we even rode the same bus. We would also eat lunch together and over lunch she once told me that she had a crush on a kid named Peter. (He was a kid in our class who seriously believed that he was truly spiderman, hence my decision to call him Peter.) I thought spiderman was cool, so I agreed "me too". And I enjoyed the fact that we were able to find over having the same "crush". But eventually, Cecily told me that she had to move to a different state. We sat together on the bus, even though it wasn't our assigned seats, and cried her whole way home.
In the third grade, a disease spread around my school. We called it Bieber Fever, and I was not immune. I thought that the way he dressed was really cool, so when I got to buy new shoes, I asked for the kind that Justin Bieber would wear. I idolized him like a big brother and since I didn't know my dad, I pretended that I was Justin Bieber's long lost sister. (Lots of girls in school wanted to be my friend after that.) Most girls kissed pictures of him in magazines, but I was always different.
I felt really alone in the third grade. Some good things were happening, my other cousin Astrid had just moved to my school and I was thrilled. I also made some new friends, but after losing Drake, having Cecily move away, and on top of it having my mom move away to a different state with my new-born baby sister, Maria; I felt abandoned and easily replaceable. I realized that people are sometimes only temporary, and that terrified me. That's a lot to feel for a 9 year old, so my grandma put me in counseling. It didn't help, but I pretended that it did.
And then suddenly Tate found his way back into my friend-circle and people started calling us boyfriend and girlfriend. I liked the sound of it. It sounded a lot less temporary. The boyfriend-girlfriend thing lasted two years before Tate broke up with me because I was "fat and ugly". Little kids can be assholes. But anyways, it didn't matter because by now I was doing school online so it was easier to avoid him. And even more importantly, that whole "uncontrollable butterflies" feeling that some girls were starting to talk about, was something that I never felt about Tate or any of my crushes.
Then I learned that Tate and Lana were moving to Florida, and not much later I got a knock on my front door. Lana had stopped by to say goodbye, much to my surprise. I felt nervous for reasons that I couldn't put my finger on. She was even older now, and prettier too. And then, she complimented me on something so stupid. She looked down at my golden Justin Bieber inspired sneakers and said something like "the way you tie your shoes is so pretty. I can never get my laces to look that nice" And then for the first time, over something so random and stupid, I felt the uncontrollable butterflies. (And yes, I now realize the irony of the whole "I like your shoelaces" Tumblr code for lesbians. The universe was foreshadowing hardcore.)
My new feelings terrified me. I was supposed to get butterflies in my stomach for boys, not girls. This was before I really knew what gay or lesbian even was, and I felt so abnormal and wrong. I silently cried myself to sleep that night and prayed to God that he would make sure that I grew up to like boys. Only boys. The next morning I woke up and pretended like nothing had ever happened. I never told anyone about my feelings, I was ashamed of them, and so I willed myself to forget that there was the possibility that I might be different.
This chapter of my journal was originally part of an open-letter that I wrote to my mom. My mom is one of the only people I know of in my family that supports gay rights, and my Grandma is pretty against that type of thing. My mom was supposed to come to my state this weekend so I could see her for the first time in months, and I had planned on coming out to her. However, once again, (like she has many times throughout my childhood for school plays and basketball games) she cancelled last minute. And now, my perfect coming out moment has been taken away from me. Not gonna lie, I'm a little disappointed.
So for today's exit ticket, I'd just like to know if any of you feel like how I do now? Have you ever felt like the perfect coming out moment will never come?
Singing Off,
~R
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What's the first thing that somebody asks you when you come out to them? If anybody is reading this then you're probably thinking something along the lines of: "Are you sure?" "How do you know?" "When did you find out?" In which case, you're correct. And for me, those questions are always hard to answer because well, I don't think there was ever one specific moment that I knew. Instead, there were a million tiny mini-realizations covered by an intense wave of denial that just built up into another bigger realization. One of these mini-realizations happened at a very young age, Kindergarten to be exact.
So basically, I did the whole Kindergarten thing twice. This is because I switched school districts and my second Kindergarten had a stupid rule about birthdays that my first Kindergarten did not, and now because of it I've always been one of the oldest kids in my grade. For example, by the end of this summer I'll be 17, and around that time I'll also be starting my Junior year, as opposed to all my other 11th grade friends, who will be 17 when they start their Senior year. It's kind of sucky, but that's the education system.
In my first Kindergarten, I learned what a crush was from my teacher. This kid named Timothy would follow me around while singing the ABC's to get my attention. I found it annoying, so me being the tiny asshole I was, I told on him. My teacher just laughed and told me that he had a crush. Something about that made me annoyed by him even more. Now, looking back, I just feel bad for little Timothy. He just wanted some attention, so I figured I owed him a paragraph.
Later that year I told my mom that I had a crush on a boy that we'll call Buck. I didn't actually like him. Id never talked to him, nor did I have any interest to, but during show and tell he showed off his skateboard. I thought skateboards were pretty cool.
When I started my second Kindergarten, I became best friends with a girl that we'll call Clarissa. Like me, she was a huge fan of the High School Musical franchise (the most well put-together dcom series ever created to this day, in my opinion). She said that Troy was cute, so I said that he was too, but my favorite character was always Gabriella. I felt different, isolated almost, when talking to Clarissa about boys like Troy Bolton. I didn't know why, but it felt similar to being left out at play time. This lonely feeling was something that little me would have to get used to.
That year little me started to play church Basketball. (You know the kind where you get participation ribbons and tell Bible verses during half-time and shout "Do it for Jesus!" To get you all hyped up. I wish I was kidding.) Secretly, when I played I'd imagine that I was Troy Bolton and that Gabriella was in the audience, so I played to impress this imaginary Gabriella. It made me feel nice.
There was another boy on my basketball team who had a crush on me. (Not to brag, but I was quite the popular 6 year old. It's probably because I was an "older woman". I've heard that guys dig that.) We'll call him Oliver. For basketball practice everyday, my grandma would put my hair into pigtails, and every time my team would sit in a circle for a juice break, Oliver would come over and tug on my pigtails really hard. It was extremely annoying. When I went home one night, I told my grandma about Oliver pulling on my hair. She smiled and said "He has a crush on you. Boys are mean to the girls that they like." The next day I asked her not to put my hair in pigtails.
One day, my cousin Jane came over to my house to play. She was a year older than me, and so obviously in my Kindergarten mind, she was one of the wisest people in the world, and I just had to follow in her footsteps. She told me on this particular day that she had a crush on a boy from school. She then asked me if I had any crushes, and I wanted to be cool like her, so in that moment I decided that I would have a crush on a boy in my class that we'll call Will. I chose him because he was the only other kid in my class who got straight A's like me. Somehow, saying that I had a real-life crush made me feel less different, and this was something that I still didn't quite understand.
Now let's backtrack to a little detail that I left out, in my first Kindergarten, I had really bad separation anxiety. Every time that my mom would drop me off I'd have meltdowns that weren't just like any little kid meltdowns, but rather panic attacks. Sometimes I would hyperventilate, and then hyperventilating would trigger my asthma. It wasn't fun, and instead of helping me, my teachers would tell me to "just stop breathing that way". A year later, society slowly began telling me (at much too young of an age) to "just like boys". In hindsight, I've always been told to change things about myself that I couldn't control.
So for today's exit ticket, I want to flip the question around on anybody who might be reading this. When did you first realize that there was something about you that made you feel different? Whether it be your sexuality, gender identity, mental illness, learning disability, or anything else, I'd like to know.
Signing off,
~R
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Formless Blob Pride Flag
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For any member of the LGBT community who has yet to figure out their sexual orientation/gender and may or may not have a label. Also for any member of the LGBT community that has a sexual orientation/gender too complicated to be defined by one specific and/or well-known label.
Inspired and created in part from art used in Dan Howell's coming out video.
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"Im not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things."
-John Green; The Fault in Our Stars
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What Does Dyke Mean?
So today, as I was eating my honeybun at breakfast (which really isn't that great, but I refuse to have anything else for breakfast for fear of disturbing my food-routine), my grandma asked me a question that took me completely off-guard.
"What does 'dyke' mean?"
I could feel my stomach flip as my heartbeat increased drastically. Now, see, my grandma is a complicated person. I love her, but she's complicated. She's one of those people who aren't too fond of the LGBT community, but firmly believes that there shouldn't be any violence or legal discrimination towards LGBT people either. Now I've tried coming out to my grandma before, and it didn't go well at all. She said some pretty hurtful things. But since then, she's slowly been warming up to the topic (she even iced a cookie in rainbow colors for pride month), however, for complicated reasons that I'll probably describe in a future blog post, I'm going to have to come out to her again - officially this time. And while my grandma has asked other startling questions before; "Do you like girls?" "Why aren't you interested in dating boys?" "You aren't, really gay, are you?", This one caught me off guard the most.
See, okay, my grandma is kind of homophobic, but she's also really innocent and naive. She grew up in a small town that was home to less than 100 people, and up until her mid-adult life, she didn't even know that black people existed, let alone queer people. That being said, she also never knew about the amount of intolerance that was directed towards minority groups. Racial and homophobic slurs don't exist in her vocabulary, unless you count the time she called a lesbian couple on Say Yes to the Dress a "couple of queers." I guess she does know that one.
I wasn't sure what answer I was supposed to give her, so I simply shrugged my shoulders and took another bite of my dull-tasting honeybun.
"Your Uncle called someone that word while he was on the phone with me the other day. I know it's a female term, but I don't know what it means."
I nodded my head. It wouldn't be unexpected from the uncle that she was referring to. You know those scary ultra-conservative rednecks that some people imagine when you say the word "American"? Well my uncle was the cookie-cutter scary redneck. Gun collection? Check. Confederate flag? Check. Works at a shooting range? Check. Thinks women are only good for house wives and shouldn't have an opinion of their own? Check. Uses the n-word freely? Check. Calls the black lives matter and LGBT pride movements a "terrorist agenda"? Check. Has a "I love Donald Trump" sign in his front yard? Check.
My grandma didn't infuse these things in him, he learned them from his father. His father was an abusive asshole with multiple domestic violence charges as notches in his bedpost. It's funny how those things can be generational.
Now that the reason for her asking the question was out in the open, I felt more comfortable giving an answer.
"Dyke is a homophobic slur, usually directed towards lesbians or other gay women." I explained, and then I gave her a little bit of history about the word and the violence that's been directed towards the LGBT community throughout history, and about how some people still hold those out-dated views.
Was that too much information? Did I give too much away? Did I show that I know so much about the LGBT community that I must be a member of it myself? I panicked internally once I had finished explaining. But to my surprise, she didn't take this as another opportunity to question my sexuality.
Instead, her eyes watered slightly and she shook her head. "I'm so naive," She admitted, and then added on with something like "I didn't know that there was still so much hatred in the world. I thought that in 10 years or so there would be no 'white' or 'black'. I thought we would all just tolerate each other as human beings. Gay people are human beings."
My heart warmed at her words, but of course, she didn't finish there.
"It's okay to be upset when someone you know, or your child comes out as gay. You can try to guide them, you can wish that they weren't on that path, but it never gives you an excuse to be a mean person."
My smile faltered. I knew that by "guide them" she meant that a part of her still thinks that gay people can be changed through some grace of God. But then I remembered, a year ago she wouldn't listen to Elton John music in the car with me. A year ago she said that there was "no reason to stand up for the LGBT community”. And now, here she was, acknowledging that what my uncle said was wrong.
It was a pure sentiment, perhaps a little misguided, but I'm proud of the progress that she's made. I'm definitely nowhere near being ready to really come out to her, but somehow, the conversation that I had with her today gave me faith that coming out will be a question of "when will I?" Rather than "will I ever?" And that's good enough for me right now.
Now I'm sitting here, waiting for lunchtime, and wondering why my grandma thought to come to me with that question of all people, and why wasn't she phased by the fact that I seemed to know so much about LGBT related issues? Is it possible that somewhere in her mind she knows? And is it possible that somewhere in her heart she's capable of accepting me for who I really am? But I guess those are questions that I can wonder about on another day.
For now, here's an exit ticket for anybody who read this pointless ramble of mine:
Who were you most nervous to come out to? And if you're still in the closet, who are you most nervous to tell?
Signing off,
~R
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Truth, Sekhar reflected, is like the sun. I suppose no human being can ever look it straight in the face without blinking or being dazed.
Narayan; Like the Sun
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This 👏🏼
Hey, quick PSA. You can identify as whatever gender or sexuality you want. And, if whatever you identify as right now becomes an uncomfortable fit in the future, then you can change what you identify as. It’s simply a part of who you are, and who you are is constantly changing, so it’s okay if that changes too. There is no time limit on your sexuality or your gender identity. There is no one definition to sexuality or gender identity. Identify as you wish as long as you feel true to yourself and, if anybody else has a problem with it, tell them to go fuck themselves. As long as you are you, you’re fuckin perfect.
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Hi Tumblr! I’m Gay
So basically, I started a journal recently, more specifically about the process I've gone through towards accepting my sexuality, for mental health purposes. Not a big deal really, just some angsty journal entries from a closeted midwesterner. Reading Love, Simon and Symptoms of Being Human inspired me to start an anonymous blog full of these journal entries. I'm not really expecting anyone to read them, but if you do: Hi, you can call me R. Is just a single letter enigmatic enough for you?
Oof, is it pretentious for me to start a tumblr blog about myself? I mean I guess that’s what the world of blogging is all about. (But does anybody really truly blog like this here on tumblr anymore? I don’t think so-) You take a tiny piece of your day to pick up a laptop or some other smartphone or tablet thing and you write about a tiny fraction of your life that people may or may not care about. With most people though, they talk about all the good parts like how some vegan obtains this unreasonably and unattainable body in the healthiest way possible, or how some soccer mom named Karen manages a house of five children, two dogs, and a coup full of chickens. But like most things online, none of it’s real. Or at least, it’s only half real. Like youtube beauty vloggers or instagram models, you get to chose what you say online, and for most people, they chose to only show the best parts of themselves. Understandably so, if you have the choice as to how you will portray yourself, you’re most likely going to do so in the most glorified way possible.(Have my ramblings lost you yet? I bet you think I sound like some wannabe John Green character, in which case, you’re probably correct.)
I was scrolling through tumblr today, looking at other journaling and bloggy blogs, and I saw a quote:
“Advice to Young Journal Keepers. Be lenient with yourself. Conceal your worst faults, leave out your most shameful thoughts, actions, and temptations. Give yourself all the good and interesting qualities you want and haven’t got. If you should die young, what comfort would it be to your relatives to read the truth and have to say: It is not a pearl we have lost, but a swine?” -Rosamond Lehmann
You’ll probably see it too if you just look up “Journal” in the search bar. It’s one of the first results that come up. (There is, however, a concerning amount of “pro-ana” shit in the tag. Watch out, being triggered isn’t fun.) Anyways, I’m not quite sure who this Rosamond Lehman lady is, and I suppose as an English Literature nerd I should have an idea -- all I know is the tiny bits of information that you can get from a quick Google search -- but all I can say is that I disagree with this qoute on every level possible. The reason why I keep my journal, isn’t so that I can preserve the best parts of myself. It isn’t for my relatives or loved ones after I pass, and even so, if they love me any less for the imperfect parts of myself then frankly, it won't be mattering to me anyways. I'll be dead. But this journal is for myself. It’s for all of me, not just the glorified parts that I’d want to put in front of a camera, but also all the other parts; the broken, the beaten, and the damned. In this blog, I will be as honest as anonymously possible.
So here we go, you can call me R. I’m 16 years old. I’m a she/her, but I don’t really care about pronouns. (For myself, I’ll respect yours of course.) And I’m Gay. Or I guess you could say Lesbian, it doesn’t really matter what label you use to define me. Queer? That works too. As long as it’s clear that I definitely absolutely do not like males. Sorry guys, I just don’t roll that way. We can still be friends?
Some people say I can o n l y identify as lesbian; that should be my only, and if not only, my primary self-identifier. “The term ‘gay’ is gendered, and strictly reserved for MALE homosexuals.” and yadda yadda, but the thing is, lesbian isn’t really my favorite word to use to identify myself as. Like don’t get me wrong, I still use it, but it’s just not what I’m the most comfortable with. And at the end of the day, isn’t being a member of the LGBTQ+ community all about using the labels and pronouns that make you most comfortable? It’s supposed to be our space, and sometimes our only space where we can be 100% ourselves all of the time (unless you’re a pedophile.You don’t belong here. I’m sorry. Not really) 
Maybe I’m still uncomfortable with the word Lesbian because of my internalized homophobia, which, as I’ve checked, is still alive and thriving within me - like whatever it is that possessed Will Byers to know that the Mind Flayer was coming. The hatred I feel towards myself for being different is still there, it’s just not always active.
Or maybe it’s because the word “lesbian” is itself, a very gendered word. I’m a cis female, and I don’t really feel or think that I’m nonbinary, but I still feel uncomfortable when very obvious gender rolls are placed upon me. Some days I enjoy looking so adrogynous that people can’t figure me out. That’s just the way I am. 
Or maybe it’s just because I’m a very complicated human. Like, for example, what if I end up developing feelings for a Non-Binary person? I mean, I know that I find Bex Taylor-Klaus e x t r e m e l y attractive, and despite their amount of female rolls in movies and television, Bex Taylor-Klaus is, in fact, a they. And Bex Taylor-Klaus can still get it (in my dreams. I know they’re 24. You can calm down. There’s easily people far younger than me on this app thirsting over Jensen Ackles, and I’m not even really thirsting). So then, if I were to one day date or have any kind of romantic interest in a Non-Binary person that I actually know, then wouldn’t it be disrespectful or “enbyphobic” to categorize myself as a lesbian?
I think Dan Howell did a very good job describing how I feel in his coming out video. I am, in fact, a formless blob. I’m not quite sure what the world thinks that I should categorize myself as, but whatever it is, I know that it’s gay, so gay is what I’m sticking with, and when -- or if -- I eventually come out to my family. Gay is most likely the word that I’ll use.
So, how’s that for a first-ever actual blog post? Pretty boring? I thought so too, but at the end of the day this blog is for me, and it doesn’t really matter how many people do or don’t read it, and it doesn’t really matter how many people enjoy it. It just feels good to finally be able to put my real self out there, even if nobody will ever know who I am.
But if you did by some chance read this far, congratulations! You officially have all the patience that I don’t! Here’s your exit ticket:
Regardless as to your gender identity or sexuality (and yes, those two things are very separate and different), is there any celebrity that never fails to make you question your sexuality?
Signing off,
R
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