I became gay at 23. I resist the urge to say I ‘realized’ I was gay. I lived my early post-puberty life and my university coming-of-age years thinking, feeling, and acting as a straight woman. When I was 22, I fell in love with my best (lady) friend. When I was 23, I accepted it.

 

I am still negotiating my identity. I wrote many of the blog posts in the immediate anguish of the experience, but it has taken many years for me to finally make this blog go live. Now, I generally feel most comfortable with the label lesbian.

 

I know I don’t have access to all ways of experiencing the world, or even being a lesbian. Discrimination affects people in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, and is layered to influence how someone experiences the world.

 

I don’t like listing off my privilege as a shopping list. This is not because I do not think it is important. I think listing privilege is a passive activity that can give us a false sense of redemption. I also think the complicated vocabulary dance can make people who don’t understand everything feel like movements of inclusion are not for them. I have a terms page for any queer words that are new to you. For the sake of brevity with context, I will briefly list some areas of my identity: I grew up middle class, and I am a white, cis, queer, woman. I use she/her pronouns.

 

I’m going to remain anonymous. I want to protect my privacy and the privacy of people I talk about in my blog. To be honest, I’m intensely scared to publish these vulnerable and personal anecdotes. I don’t want to hurt anyone near me by recounting my interactions with them when I felt they didn’t handle things very well. I’m also wary of being self-indulgent. But the information that I needed on queer issues was so limited and hard to find that I was spurred to create this blog. I hope the things that I have discovered on my journey might help you in yours.