Dear Baby Queer,

First of all, I’m proud of you. You went through some shit to finally make it to your first Pride ceremony when you were 22. You had known you were “different” since you were in kindergarten, but your different was exactly who you needed and would eventually want to be. It would take almost 20 more times after the first time you stood on the sidelines and watched gay parties so at home with rainbow pennants and their adore for each other and who they were before you would find your own home. Queer was not a word on your lips hitherto, and nonbinary didn’t exist in any room you did. But firstly you had to test your consolation in a life that had always seemed forbidden; lesbian was almost like a dirty word, but it was the one that realized the most sense at the time, and the disgrace you felt apologized the clay because you took that description and tried to settle in.

You were finally out and with other individuals who admitted you without rationale or defiance. You weren’t expected or assumed to be straight when you were with queer tribes, but you still felt like an intruder. The talent of select drapes and mane that you really required on your mas still felt undeserved. Your sexuality and gender identity weren’t attracted apart hitherto so you took on calls like butch and dyke to accompany the acces your nature loved and to distance yourself from statements like “femme.” How could you clarify your gender formulation when you didn’t understand gender or how to express it accurately? When you went to your first LGBT conference that focused on identity and sexuality a few years after living as what you thought was a proud butch lesbian, you became angry and exasperated at the young transgender males because you missed something they had, but you didn’t know it yet.

Forgive yourself for being an asshole to those sons, because you will eventually feel the same hurt you generated when you asked them why they couldn’t “just be masculine lesbians” — others will ask the same of you one day. You had so much to learn about yourself. You had more to be informed about the community that would become your homeland.

Some of your gay education came from volumes, movies, porn, and internet pursuings. Most of it came from the people who came before you, the people who made it possible to explore the pieces of you that didn’t fit or that weren’t turned the right way to fix the problem office. You have always been in awe of the folks who lives visibly out men. You knew the fear of being gay in a time when same-sex civil solidarities were being discussed so you could imagine the fear of living in a occasion where it was easier to be arrested, shot, or killed for being homosexual than to be out. You humbly thanked — you still do — the thundering activists, advocates, and lesbian elders who fought for every one of your instants of fag bliss. You didn’t know how tired, scared, and thickened these fighters felt. You will though.

It will feel hopeless, but one day you will anticipate Pride with an irritation of despair and disappointment in humanity before you feel the fervour and exuberance that tremors on the edges of rainbow flags.

Some of this will come with the accumulation of time. Being out and homosexual means being exposed to more discrimination as the fight for equality continues; with progress comes resist and you will see it all. Some of these thickened feelings will come from having kids because they will unlock a protectiveness in you that “ve got nothing” to do with yourself. You will spend money on endorse babies who were yours before their notion and you will be asked to prove your relationship as they cling to your legs around strangers. And when one of your boys turns out to be transgender, you know you will burn everything to the ground to protect her, even if it implies burning those in your community because you will learn that transphobia exists in spaces that are supposed to be safe. The weariness will also come from sobriety and discovering what you have always known but drank apart because implanting something without a mention was easier than not having an answer.

You will come out as nonbinary at 38 and feel like so much time was squandered, more be considered that familiar feeling of adolescent shame to once again ask others to accept you. You will learn what gender dysphoria and euphoria necessitates. You will appreciate that the freedom with which someone goes your pronouns chasten has little to do with you and so much more with them. This window into people’s desire to learn and willingness to try will create a jadedness in you that will eat at you. You will struggle to find ways to keep it from stealing your gay elation. You is to be able to concede that religion will always be a perilous target for the homosexual parish. Allies exist, but no administration can be affirming when “religious freedom” allowed by bigotry.

You will discover that your own pride never going on around here, but it alters. You “il be going” from doe-eyed naivety to a more radicalized version of queerness. There isn’t anything wrong with this, and you will learn that everyone’s experience of their queerness and identity is valid and where it needs to be. You will too learn that you disagree with this — or don’t like it — at times. And then you will remind yourself that no one’s journey is linear, and people need to find themselves in their own time.

You will become a leader and an partisan and you will feel misunderstood by your own community and friends at times because you are thunderous and public with your singer. You will hold folks to a statu of accountability that may seem unjust sometimes. You will stop defending for this. You know what you need and deserve and will fight for it. You will do so because it necessitates determining the route easier to steer for the young gays behind you and for “their childrens” you are raising.

You will always get the warmth of comfort at Pride. You will ever feel your torso unwind when you are finally part of the majority. And you will eventually feel whole. It will make removing body parts and aged names to got to get, but your loss will allow for an abundance of acceptance.

And it will make seeing someone experience their first Pride to remind you of the joy and wonder of eventually strolling into their queerness to remind you that it’s okay to remove the chip on your shoulder every so often. You are so resilient and will always need to be. But you will stay in love with your homosexual life.

Pride is where both ends of the spectrum meet, and there is a requirement always remember you aren’t fighting for the sake of the combat; you are fighting because you are worth all of the glamour, disfigures, and lesbian magic.

Love,

Me

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