I made that movie. I made that animation. I left those notes. I showed people the movie. I showed people the animation. Everyone saw those notes. People still see the animation when my mom makes me show them. They all go quiet. Every single one of them goes quiet. I know what they are thinking.
Professors. I wonder what they are thinking too.
"Do you identify as a lesbian yourself?" Andy asked me that yesterday morning. Can't you see that I'm trying to find a visual language for something I can't say to everyone quite yet? Forty years of being out out out asking three-months of self=acceptance about being something that is really fucking scary. Coming into an identity and what that identity means.
I know that this would be easier if I hadn't been cutting. If I still didn't want to do it. I can't watch my movie anymore for the triggers. Fuck. I swear too much now.
I have so many option right now. I need to finish my animation, and chuck it out into the world so that it can find where it belongs. It doesn't belong on my computer. It didn't belong in my animation class. It doesn't really belong in this city.
She'll do that. What will I do? I'll send her with the necessary paper work to all those little festivals, and make sure she looks pretty enough to be looked at seriously. Even if nobody wants her, she'll be ok because someone will always appreciate her.
No, but really what will I do? I asked Andy if coming out stories were cliche. He said they weren't because everyone still has a little soft spot for them. Everyone always likes hearing them.
I could make a coming out piece. A personal piece. I could do that, but I'm not sure how. Writing, video, animation. I could just tell people, but I feel like that's going so awesomely lately.
What am I so scared of? Am I scared that I'm really not queer, or lesbian? Aly, Aly, Aly, Aly. You've felt different all your life.
Remember that day when Carly fell asleep, and you stayed up all night talking to that girl who was your sister's friend. You walked down the street at 6:30am in the morning, and went running on the track, and then walked back home again. It was just friendship, but you liked her. You liked her so much that you couldn't go to sleep even when you wanted to that night. Because you knew it would be just you and her, and you always did seem to like people who are too popular. People who are too difficult to steal away from other people for a few minutes.
Remember that feeling in your chest when your best friend would talk about the boys that she liked at church camp. Brian and Jason. Jake and Thomas. Generic boy names like that. The boys who didn't like her, the boys who were fakely her friends, and would never be her boyfriend. She liked them so much, and it hurt you that she liked them more than you. The camp that stole her away for six weeks in the summers when you weren't working and weren't too busy to have a social life.
Remember that girl. The girl you were never going to come out for. It was only an accident. It was because you said you like boys, but someday in the future you might date a girl someday you know just to see how it is, right?
Remember when you sat on that blue chair in the old computer room when you were fifteen. You sat on it, and you were so relieved to say, "I'm definitely not gay. I mean I can't be. I just can't be gay. It's too hard to be gay." And you thought about the word "lesbian" and that you didn't really like it. And that it just wasn't a word that described you. You were so much better off realizing this so soon you thought. Over and done with. Simple.
Remember in high school how you loved cutting. The thing that sucked your desire for everything else in the world. Still, you managed to be fond of that girl so far away, and that teacher, and the girl whos name you won't admit to drawing hearts around in your notebook that one day in art class when you didn't even know what you were doing and someone had to point it out to you. You looked down at your notebook, and it was her name, and not a boys name. And you explained it by being absent-minded.
There were boys. The boys in elementary school. Those two boys in grade nine you might have liked. The boys you tried hard to like. Remember when you were talking to your friend on MSN, and you said, "I might like E." And she got all excited for you, and gave you suggestions, and then you realized that you liked her more than you liked him. And the real reason you were telling her wasn't because you were overcome with a secret desire for this boy that you absolutely had to disclose to somebody, but it was because you felt like it was normal to like a boy. You thought by talking it over you would suddenly grow an immense, overpowering attraction.
Maybe in five years, you'll find a guy you like. Maybe ten. You will date, and then you will have kids or something and get married maybe. But listen, you and I know you've never written a song for a boy. There was part of that song that was inspired by John, and that song you just wrote him. That's it. Every other song is about that girl you couldn't come out for, or your grandparents. There was that one song about the boy who died in your grade. All the new songs are about girls. You don't purposely do this I know. It just happens when you open your mouth, the words seem to fall out the way they do, and you know who they were inspired by, or for.
We could go with it, or we could not. We could sit on the chair in your room and say, "I'm definitely not gay, I'm definitely not into girls." And then we could find a guy. Try to like one like we like girls. In that all-or-nothing young way where we stare at the ceiling and only think of them. Where every song you listen to is a story about you and them together. When you like someone a little too much, a little too hard to be normal.
Maybe you will actually genuinely like a boy. Maybe he will make you crazy, and fulfilled someday. And that's ok if that's the truth. If that's truly what happens, then go for it, and embrace it. But right now, you need to embrace who you feel you are becoming. Your truth.
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