A Crisis of Belonging: A Wattpride story

A Crisis of Belonging

( Hello! Nice to sort of meet you. I promise that any offensive phrases in this are not intended as such, and are meant in a totally different way to how they have been interpreted. This does describe really strong self-loathing in vivid detail, so if you're uncomfortable with that, I suggest you look elsewhere. Apart from that, enjoy, you morbid little thing - Donnie)

There are a million things they make you forget. Your lesbian barbies. Those innumerable androgynous teddy bear couples who needed no gender. That friend whom you pretend-married. The only issue you two had with two girls or two boys marrying was whether you would both wear wedding dresses, suits, or just do one each. You probably don't remember them now, but they were there all the same, because you were a child, and children don't judge.

I think I started forgetting who I was when my teachers told me that I'd like boys when I was older, that I had to have sex eventually. It was a horrible fairytale beast waiting to hunt me down. There's a distinct memory I have of repeating over and over to my reception teacher that I didn't like boys. Her reply was 'You will when you're older!' Not understanding what I meant, she went on to tell me how handsome my husband was going to be and how happy we would be together. Eventually, I grew so frustrated that I burst into tears. That moment perfectly described my struggles with sexuality nearly thirteen years.

The world we live in isn't one made for us. It's for the people who don't 'go on about their sexuality' because they assume that everyone is straight. They're inescapable. The girl I used to be friends with laughingly recounted the story of how her old school took her on a trip for LGBTQ+ education. She hated every second of it. 'They're pushing it too far! I don't need to know or care!' she cried. I winced when I remembered coming out to her; she did nothing except talk about how straight she was for a week. Vehemently, I wished that my comings out were to the people who actually cared first. In Year seven I had a crush on this girl. To me, she was the most perfect person I'd ever seen, and I honestly would have died for her. I still would today. It was the most obvious thing in existence. Nobody realised. Yet somehow, when I walked to class twice with one boy wedding bells were ringing. This world was not one meant for me.

So was it any wonder that I used the word broken instead of homoromantic when I thought of myself for years? I had a wonderful, accepting family. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't because I had nothing else to hate. It's because no-one else was like me in the media. How was I to know I wasn't alone? I hated myself for not feeling sexually attracted to people. I thought that I was an abomination. A mistake of nature. I would cry myself to sleep on the days when there was nothing left inside me but the knowledge that I was broken and useless. Those were the very worst of times. It was like the world had gone blank, and my apathy had infected everything with its seeping despair. Who was I to fight it? Accumulated emotions that had spent too long pent up broke the dam at the end of the day, and I would cry into my pillow, muffled. I was embarrassed about it, I never talked about it, and now I wish that I had. I was eleven years old when it started. No child deserves to feel like that.

When I first received access to platforms on the internet, I started recognising people's stories of discovering their sexualities. Gradually, I came to a realisation: my identifying with them was more than just empathy. I knew who I was, and the way I felt was not horribly unnatural or in need of fixing. My self-acceptance had begun. It was a long, hard journey. Setbacks lurked everywhere, unavoidable. For a time, I lived in a perfect world where I wasn't full to the brim with hatred. Who I was became so normal to me that I sometimes forgot that reality wasn't as forgiving. Soon enough, my illusion was shattered. Harshly. When rumours reached me of a boy who liked me, so did too the half-repulsed, half-excited whisperings of how he had previously admitted to attraction to another boy. I was an object of mockery and to be pitied because I had been admired by someone bisexual. I locked away any thoughts in my heart of coming out to the people in my school.

I wasn't safe even on my online persona. Coming across a post on Pinterest that suggested an alternative term to the ever-expanding acronym LGBTQIA+, I ventured into the comments section. Enraged commenters spewed hate for those who weren't 'the real gay community'. Ranting about asexuals 'invading' the community that was 'theirs', they gave me my first taste of the poison that is aphobia. Everywhere I looked, they told me that I didn't know what real pain felt like, because I was accepted for my identity that apparently wasn't even a real sexuality. My bubble had been popped again, and I felt that there was nowhere in this world where I belonged. My healing wounds were ripped wide open all over again. The world had reminded me, yet again, that I was a squatter in a society of other people.

I'm happy now. I'm out, I'm proud, and I'm right where I belong and want to be: here. My mind is a hopefully healthy one, and the crippling self-loathing has slithered back off into the darkness from whence it came. I survived, but only with the help of my family and friends. Luckily, these experiences aren't the sum of my life. I accidentally came out to my real friend via a gay joke, giving her the ability to fully realise her bisexuality, and now I know that it's a queer world when it comes to my friends. Thankfully, my story isn't all doom and gloom, and the internal turmoil is over, but it could have been an awful lot happier. I would've been saved from years of misery if I'd seen just a few other people like me. Just like my friend, I would have had the courage to explore my feelings with the knowledge that I wasn't alone. Representation, including that from Wattpride, is actually incredibly important and I'm delighted that it's arriving, because now the world will be a little bit brighter with all the voices making this world a bit more for us.