grappling with a realisation that has been a long time coming
I think as a woman a part of me is inherently queer (i think this of all women, to an extent) but growing up i have internalised deeply the belief that male attraction and male love is the most valid and self-fulfilling thing i can have. My thoughts and feelings, my work, my beauty, worthwhile only in the eyes of masculine acceptance. My sense of self worth as a girl swells in the love of a man and fades, gently, when that love dries up. This kind of love isn’t sexual. I don’t even know if “love” is the right word. It’s more a soft wash of approval that confirms me, that makes me intrinsically more valuable .
I knew as a young girl what I know now, what I’ve always known, that the affection I feel for women is more meaningful and real than anything. That it would make me whole, if I let it – but I can’t. What I desire will never be more important to me than my need to be desired. Loving somebody perfectly will never matter more than being loved, in the way I have always thought I should be loved.
I’ve learnt how to love men too, as fully as I think I could love any girl. It helps that I feel a kind of illusory thumbs up stemming from the world I see, the world I have always known. I love a man even now, too much to go inside myself and uproot the darkening knowledge that I have carried this far. I carry it quietly and without burden. I think many women carry it too; a latent queerness that softly watches the bloom and fall of het romance, and wonders why there is so much fear.
Wrapped in the gentle warmth of someone who loves me i feel complete, confirmed and vital. But sometimes in the moments I’m alone, away from that, I think about that other part inside of me. I give it light.
That Nowhere Feeling 