thinking about when I was 12 and arguing with people on here about belief in God and why gay love is wrong…
… since then: became a staunch atheist and lost my virginity to a boy at 15, started transitioning at 20, am now a polytheistic neopagan in an ongoing throuple that's lasted for 2+ years
12-year-old me would have an ANEURYSM at even ONE of those things, let alone all of them sdhJSHDB JKHSFB
That is what ultimately broke me out of the conditioning I had been raised with. I eventually realized I was gay myself, and those books helped me to come to terms with it. I wasn't the sinful, lustful, strange, or defective thing that homophobic rhetoric claimed. I was just a normal person, as was anyone else who was LGBTQ+
You're the most valid of us all, baby.
I remember coming to a conclusion in highschool that I was likely bi-loveual after on the band bus we'd play a game called "gay chicken" (living in a red state is wild) which was when two kids of the same gender presentation would slowly go in for a kiss and the first to pull back was the "chicken." I... I never lost a game lol.
But then of course I can also remember in highschool how I'd use the T-slur pretty frequently in comedy because I still thought that was a joke. Little did I know how femme and non-binary I actually was. The first time I shaved my legs in my 20s I cried. Growing my hair out, getting my ears pierced, and even taking estrogen for a little while until I lost health insurance, all of that spits in the face of the things I used to think and say.
We all repress the things about ourselves we least understand and are afraid to express them in fear of others bullying us. I think it's the "if I call this out first, no one else will notice it about me" even if its still buried deep in the subconscious.
I'm proud of all of us for still being alive and for the growth we've all achieved. I've specifically started reclaiming the term "oldcigarette" because I've been here almost 20 years, but also because, yes I am a cigarette and I'll fight you.
