I want to get a girlfriend, just to prove I can.
I haven't felt love in forever. I haven't felt butterflies at the sight of someone since...I don't even know when. Possibly that one girl from robotics in 2017. But even then...I got so fucked up by my first crush. It's not even her fault. I've thought about this and there's one reason why I've never dated. It's not the fact that I provide the right amount of innuendoes to show that I'm available (that is, I have an idea and laugh to myself, since I can't make a lesbian joke in front of straight people, that's hypocritical. I hate when men talk about how amazing their orgasm was when they masturbated, so I won't talk about spreading or eating). It's not the bad jokes I make, which make me the stereotype of cute, goofy, bad-pun girl. It's not my dark, dangerous-yet-playful looks. It's not my emotional baggage, and the late nights I'd spend with my crush, crying about the stains that the people I love have left on the patchwork of my life. It's not my unhealthy obsession with Fifth Harmony (please get me started, I have a lot of things I want to say. I mean, don't get me started). It's not the fact that I'm a crazy-talented songwriter and author (so go listen to my songs, I'm Pyroclastic on SoundCloud. The one who made Ascend and Broken).
It's 100% because I'm gay.
The worst part is, I'm not technically a lesbian. Since I'm genderfluid, if I'm nonbinary and the other person is female, that's not homosexuality. But since my grammar-brain cringes every time I consider using they/them to describe myself, I can't really evade that stereotype.
I'm afraid to let people in, because once I let people know what bothers me and ask them to avoid it, they have a habit of using their newly-discovered knowledge to find the chinks in my armor and avoid guessing what hurts me. Every time I look at a girl and am pleased by what I see, I start scouring them for anything I can find that's wrong with them, and blowing it up, so that I can lose my crush, and be loveless again. This is because I know that I have no chance.
Like the fact that I wrote a 6000-word autobiographical piece about a girl I liked, in order to convince myself that she was not an angel. Or three of them, who I decided were just too boring for me. Or my favorite, where I stalked her on Twitter and found a tweet in which she wondered whether it was immoral to try to rape a girl, just because she was curious about homosexuality. Sometimes I like to pretend that all my crushes, if they got to know me, would only want to "trick me into sex" and then leave me for dead. To feel better about that assumption, I'd like to think that one hit would be enough to get them addicted, but what do I know? I've never tasted myself.
So, next year, I want to find a gay. I want to talk to said gay. I want to flirt with said gay. I would do so by just being myself, because I did an experiment last school year where I didn't hold back at all for a week at school, and suddenly I had three people seeing me as a potential new friend, instead of a quiet, emo, back-row type. I want to subtly compliment said gay, telling the gay how beautiful she is and how I love the way her mind works. I want to invite said gay to drive an hour to reach my house, so that we can hang out and maybe watch movies, and I can "accidentally" rest my head on her shoulder. I want to talk about the future with said gay (like I did with that one girl in sixth grade), and tell her that she can achieve her dreams, and be inspired by her passion. And maybe she'll let me spill to her all my passions about music, and walk her through one of my Ableton tracks, and maybe I can show her my books. If she doesn't, then I'll tease her with my lips, and then ask to just be friends, and keep her at arm's length like I do with all but three of my other friends.
HAHAHA! Like I'd be able to find a gay that isn't in the closet, in the Republican corner of Michigan. Or in my tiny school, where there are less than 200 people enrolled, and somehow there are only, like, 20 gays.
Either way, I want to flirt with someone. Just to prove to myself that I can be liked, and I can open up without getting hurt. That I can be seen as something more than a supporting character, that someone like Lilly Truscott can be loved when there's a Miley Stewart standing next to her. That I can be seen as sexual, as beautiful, that someone could look at me and want to touch me. That someone can see who I actually am, and their eyes won't be filled with disgust, or they won't use that moment to point out my shortcomings.
