In my first year of college, I decided to go to a drag show for the first time. Traipsing down Lower Mall with my friends, we giggled nervously as we talked about what the show might be like. They were all bubbling with excitement, their energy radiating throughout Koerner’s Pub as we entered, the rush of a new experience pumping through the air.
But I felt more apprehensive than excited. Dressing up in drag or watching it didn’t really appeal to me, and I would hear throngs of judgy aunties shaming me in the back of my mind if I thought about it for more than a few seconds. Besides, I felt I didn’t meet what I thought were the requirements to be there. I hadn’t romantically held hands with a girl, let alone kissed one.
Did I even deserve to be here? Shouldn't I give up my seat for someone more Queer than me?
I couldn’t stop thinking about this in the moments before the show began, my head spinning from this identity crisis that I didn’t know who to talk to about. Yet when I actually watched the show, I almost cried — out of admiration for the way the performers openly expressed themselves, and for the Queer part of myself that had spent forever in hiding and still didn’t feel safe enough to emerge from its cocoon.
I remember thinking: what must it feel like to be so bold with how you live? To be so yourself that people recognize that and don’t question the authenticity of your identity?
And more importantly: would I ever get to that point?
These questions burrowed holes in my mind for many months following the show, and I began questioning the feelings I had about the one girl I’d even liked so far. I brought it up with a friend during the following summer, asking, “But what if I never actually liked her, and it was all in my head?”
She looked baffled.
“Babe, you were smitten. Did you hear yourself talk about her?”
Oh. I’d never realized that in the midst of my crisis about perceiving myself as Queer, others were already seeing me in that light. It was a pleasant surprise, but I was still confused.
“But, like, how do I enter the Queer community? Does this mean I just… am a part of it?” I asked.
“Of course! There’s no ‘entrance,’ babe. Here, if you like, I can give you ‘official’ permission to join us. Yeh lo, your imaginary entry ticket. Happy?”
Something shifted in my brain chemistry that day. It was like the ball had finally dropped on my needing to validate myself as being a member of the community.
And while this realization helped tide me over for a while, it didn’t completely quash the demons inside. I let the obstacles that came with entering new phases of my life take over my brain, the rise and fall of second year occupying any active spaces. The thoughts came back recently, though, when I started to like someone again. Another girl.
I refused to tell my friends about it, hoping it wasn’t real and would just go away. I didn’t want to accept that the monster was still there — the one that crept up now and then to create pockets of misery in corners of my mind, screaming, “It’s all in your head, fool!”
Why was it so difficult for me to accept that I might like her? That I found her attractive and funny and kind and beautiful in more than a platonic way? That I might want to kiss her and hold her hand out in public like a straight couple? That I might even love her someday?
Why couldn’t I give myself the permission to imagine the two of us as a ‘normal’ couple in my mind?
Then it happened — the first peck on the lips, the hands laced in one another’s in the middle of a Tim Hortons, the cuddling before classes started for the day. It all happened, but I didn’t feel much lighter. In fact, I felt heavier. Like the weight of the world was on me to come out to friends and family and everyone in sight. Like everything we did had to be explained and justified to everyone around.
I wanted to explain to them that Queerness has been around forever, in scriptures in Indian temples and in our deities, in people of all ages; that it’s not a fad or something I want to be a part of to ‘look cool.’
That this is just… me.
The internalized homophobia continued growing creepers around my heart, squeezing it tighter and tighter. She was lovely and we were great, so why couldn’t I stop?
Why can’t I?
I thought telling people might be the solution. Being open about it, you know? So I told my friends, family friends and even my parents, thinking maybe if they accepted me, it would bring me closer to accepting myself. It helped for sure, but not as much as I thought.
So I still wonder, what makes it easier?
What if I refuse to accept this as a true fear and just move through life in denial? Will it stay like a pit in my stomach until I can’t bear it any longer and just burst? Do I need to face it head-on? How do I even do that?
Maybe it begins with me writing this piece, throwing myself into a crisis all over again. Or maybe it begins by accepting that I might always feel this way.
But I don’t want to. I want to experience Queer joy — the feeling of lightness people talk about, the utter acceptance of who they are. I want to be able to think of her — her grinning face, tender eyes, gentle hands — without having the knots in my stomach rise up to my heart, preventing me from feeling anything wholly. I want to be able to love her the way she deserves.
I don’t want to feel this way forever.
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