I'm trying to tell you something about my life

I see a lot of people post about how "so clearly gay" they were as kids, and that's not really me. I mean, I can see it so clearly. But not in that sort of stereotypical way.

I have spent a lot of time feeling like I don't fit in the gay community. Like I am somehow "not gay enough", even though that shouldn't even be a thing. But I don't fit the stereotypes. My appearance doesn't scream lesbian. I'm not great at most sports. I'm not butch but I'm also not femme. I'm just me. And that's kind of always been how it is. I never fit anywhere completely comfortably.

I wasn't a 100% tomboy little kid. I didn't run around in backwards ball caps and play with the boys. I was equally at home playing out in the trees and making up dance routines. I picked what I wore from a limited selection of mostly hand me downs from my sister. I dressed like a 90s kid without much money. A lot of bike shorts and t-shirts with cartoon cats on them. Sometimes I had short hair, I always had big nerdy glasses, and I never fit a label. I couldn't be a tomboy because I was bad at team sports. I wasn't a cute girly girl because I liked playing in the mud. I wasn't any one thing. But one thing that stands out clearly now is that I was so indifferent to the boys. I literally didn't care that they existed. I didn't actively dislike them, I just did not care. And it didn't seem weird when I was 6 or 7, but as I got a bit older I realized that I was supposed to like them in a way I did not.

I remember weird flashes of moments where I realized I wasn't "normal". This would have been mid to late 90s. The other girls were having crushes on Jonathan Taylor Thomas and the Hanson kids. And I just didn't. I didn't have a crush on any boys. And it didn't feel like there was another option. Not really. I didn't know any gay people in real life. Sometimes gay men were mentioned, but never women. Except for my tiny glimmer of hope from Sailor Moon, there wasn't really anywhere to see that it was okay to be who I was starting to realize I was. I remember when Ellen came out, but it wasn't a huge cultural moment for me. I didn't watch her show, but I do remember her Oprah interview and a very angry homophobic woman. But listening to this nearly 40 year old discuss her decision to come out to the public didn't seem the same as what I was going through. 

I was starting to have crushes on celebrities just like my friends were, only on women. I loved Sporty Spice, Chely Wright, Helen Hunt in Twister, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Alex Mack. I was in such deep denial that I convinced myself I just wanted to be like them. I was pushing it down so much that I almost convinced myself.

Then I got to middle school, and shit hit the fan. I only spent 2 years in middle school thanks to a change in the school system at the time. Grades 7 and 8. 1998-2000. Some of the worst years of my life. I was half a foot taller than most of the girls. I had a fully adult size 8 body in a time obsessed with being a 0. I still had my big dorky glasses. I didn't know how to dress "cool". I liked the wrong music, the wrong people. I was in middle school the first time someone told me it was wrong to be gay. When someone told me that I stood like a lesbian (apparently I had gay posture?), that they wouldn't be friends with me if I was, that I had to have crushes on boys or something was wrong with me. And I got scared. So I changed how I dressed, how I stood, walked, and acted. I put pictures of Backstreet Boys in my locker, I pretended to have crushes on boys (but only ones I knew wouldn't actually like me). I saw the little lesbian in me and I pushed her to the back of the closet and I buried her under so much weight and pressure. I stopped telling people anything real and started crying in bathroom stalls daily. I sunk deep into depression and anxiety. I tried to starve myself. I tried to be someone else. I tried to get rid of myself. 

Middle school was when I was told that a lesbian couldn't go to a sleepover with straight girls. I got scared that meant I was creepy and gross. We had a (rumoured) lesbian teacher who (allegedly) had been pulled from teaching gym to teaching our French class. Because parents didn't want a lesbian in the locker room. It was 1999. I internalized that message. Lesbians can't be in locker rooms with other girls. I changed in bathrooms and tried not to look at anyone. When I was at my dance classes, I arrived with my dance clothes under my regular ones so I could avoid being in the locker rooms. It sounded like being a lesbian was the worst thing I could be. So I ran from it. I threw myself into ballet, into dressing "cool", into pretending I cared about boys. Headfirst into my depression. 

I also got really into music and movies at that point. I dreamed of running away to New York or San Francisco. Or more realistically, Toronto or Montreal. I kept a page from a teen magazine that mentioned But I'm a Cheerleader, even though I wouldn't watch the movie until I was 19. I didn't know how to ask to rent it. I thought if I couldn't find myself in the world around me, maybe pop culture would help. Fredericton was small, but there was a big world out there. But there wasn't much representation back then. Melissa Etheridge, who I was lowkey obsessed with. Carol and Susan would show up on Friends sometimes. And that was about it. There were a few more mentions of gay men. There were Degrassi reruns. Jack on Dawson's Creek came out. I started watching Will and Grace. And there was Matthew Shepard. 

Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998. I don't know how to explain to the younger generation how it felt. I was 12. I almost feel like I was too young to have felt it like people 5-10+ years older than me would. But it was like an ice cold hand grabbed on to my heart. I pushed myself farther back into the closet after. Being gay wasn't just weird, it could get you killed. And I couldn't talk to anyone about it. I wasn't brave enough to challenge the narrative around me. I just wanted to get out of school, out of Fredericton, anywhere but where I was.

I spent high school pushing down all the rainbow parts of myself. I had a goal: Graduate and get into a good university. Maybe in a big, gay friendly city. I became a great ally for the gay community. I argued passionately in favour of marriage equality when my high school thought it was helpful to debate the issue. And ignored the part of me that hurt to hear my long-time classmates say how wrong it was to be gay. How it ruined society for them. I went to the occasional church youth group with my friends, and argued with the anti-gay rhetoric. I had grown up United and dropped out of church at 13. These Baptist youth groups were teaching kids to hate. I didn't go very many times. I learned about politics, about the Charter, about the cases that guaranteed protection for gay Canadians. I learned that Alberta had to be forced to add sexual orientation to its Human Rights code. I graduated but I didn't get out. For financial reasons, I had to stay in my hometown for university, but that is another whole story.

I wish I had a different story to tell. I wish I had been confident in who I was. I wish I had been someone with the courage to come out young. I wish I could have talked openly about my crushes when I was 13. I wish my response to the homophobic society I was in was to question it, to push back. Instead it was to punish myself, to change myself, to harm myself. I heard all around me that I was the problem. That I was the thing that needed to change. So I tried to change myself. I didn't see a possibility where I could be a lesbian and be who I wanted to be. There were no lesbians to see. The handful there were seemed more masculine presenting than I ever would be. Sure, boys didn't like me, but neither did girls. I didn't want to be gay, but I didn't want to be straight either. I never dated boys, never even kissed them at that age. I would drunkenly kiss exactly 2 guys when I was in university, then I stopped trying at all. I tried to be straight, but I didn't try that hard. Mostly I tried to blend in. 

I wonder what it would have been like if I had seen myself in the world around me. If I had known any gay adults. If any of my teachers, or anyone at my part-time jobs had been out. If we had better representation on TV or in music. If Hayley Kiyoko had been around. If Santana Lopez was on my TV. It might have felt possible to be who I am. Or maybe I still would have been scared. Maybe I'm just not that brave. It's still not easy. 

These are some of the things I don't usually talk about. These are not stories I tell often. They aren't "fun gay." But it's true. I trapped myself so deep in that closet that I am still undoing the damage at 35. I still don't know how I actually want to dress, or have my hair, or even act in public. I still hate my body. The stupid curves of my lower body that draw so much unwanted attention from men. I will never know who I could have been if I hadn't tried to get rid of the core of who I am from ages 12-22. I never took a chance on myself. I spent those core years of discovering your identity trying desperately to change mine, or at least to cover it up. And I still feel the panic when strangers making small talk as if I have a boyfriend. When I try to socialize and I freeze instead of just saying that I'm gay. I still feel the moments of terror that I (hopefully) don't need to feel. 

And here's the thing: I shouldn't even complain. I didn't grow up in a judgmental household. We went to church, but to the least terrifying Christian option. And we weren't really "believers." We stopped going when I just casually mentioned that I didn't want to. My family believed in science. I'm also a white cis woman. So there are people who have had to fight so much harder than me. I feel unjustified in how much it hurt growing up. I feel like I shouldn't complain. But I also feel like it is important to tell our stories. Like maybe it will help someone else feel less alone than I felt. Or maybe it will just help explain myself a little better.