𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣 & 𝔸𝕝𝕨𝕒𝕪𝕤 | 𝒚𝒂𝒄𝒉𝒊. 𝒉 |

𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚞𝚎

June 26, 20XX

In school, they always teach love in a general sense. They talk about loving your family. They talk about loving your friends. And when the time is right, they talk about loving someone, but in a special way. Love could be platonic like used for family and friends. But love can also be romantic like the type used in romantic relationships.

Love was always taught and portrayed as being between a man and a woman. Adam and Eve was often used as the expectation of how love is supposed to be like.

I was never taught that love could be expressed within the same gender. I don't recall any one of my teachers expanding the spectrum either. Neither did my parents.

This confused me as a child. I never understood why, but I could never envision myself in a relationship with a man. No matter how hard I tried, I always felt disgusted thinking about it.

I remember when the girls in my class would talk about wanting a handsome or rich husband in the future. They would daydream about their "ideal" boyfriend. They'd list specific features they would want their partner to have. Whenever I was brought into the conversation, I always just nodded my head in agreement.

But, I strongly resented their ideas. I hated the way they'd talk about guys. Creating unrealistic expectations.

But it wasn't just that.

I didn't even like guys to begin with. Sure, they were fun to hang around with. I was more into roughhousing as a kid rather than picking flowers to make flower crowns. I once got in trouble at school for roughhousing with a boy during recess.* My parents didn't enjoy that phone call when I got home though.

I always saw guys as friends or acquaintances. I could never see past that. I remember when I would get confessions from guys. I didn't know how to react, accept, or even politely decline their feelings. I always felt bad when I'd just blankly stare at them. The girls in my class would always get jealous and upset. They never understood why I always rejected them. They told me I should appreciate their feelings for me. They called me selfish for not accepting their confessions.

If only they knew.

As for my parents, love was something they never considered teaching to me and my siblings. They always told us to focus on our studies, which is reasonable to some degree. Whenever they did touch on the subject, they always explained how it's been the opposite genders. They never said it was normal to not like the opposite gender. Being straight seemed like the only option in their mind.

It wasn't until my older brother came out to me when he was 13 and I was 9, I finally accepted that I liked girls. It's quite ironic. My parents, well, mainly my mom, who seems to dislike homosexuals, created and gave birth to three homosexual children.

My sister came out as pansexual to my parents when she was 18. It didn't go so well. My mother disregarded my sister's feelings. She said it wasn't true, and she was just going through a phase. (She said that to all of us) Because of that, since my sister had already graduated, moved out into the city. She refused to live under my mother's conditions. I don't blame her.

My brother had the same experience. He came out when he graduated as well. Our mother was not having it. Refusing to live under the same conditions, he moved out. He stayed in Miyagi, not wanting to leave me with our homophobic mother, but found an apartment decently far enough.

Having two children already disappointing her caused her to hold unrealistic expectations upon me. She wanted me to become someone she couldn't be. It was only a matter of time till she realizes her final child, her last hope, had yet to come out as a homosexual.

Only God knows what would happen then.

*fun fact: this actually happened to me in elementary. apparently, my mom got a call from my school one day. i guess the yard-duty person at recess must've complained that i was playing with the guys and was getting too rough for their liking? i honestly have no memory of that whatsoever, but my parents still tease me about it