Wretched

“Did you meet any boys?”

“People that young shouldn’t call themselves lesbians. They don’t know how inappropriate that word is.”

“You better give me grandchildren.”

“Why haven’t you ever had a single boyfriend?”

“Ew, you’re a lesbian? You?”

“I wish I was gay! It must be so much easier dating girls.”

Whenever I’m told those things, I remember a specific day. I took out my phone and clicked on the snap my now ex-girlfriend had sent me. Her and her mother smiling, with the text, “meet your suegra.” My lips pulled into a half smile, half grimace, and my phone suddenly felt heavier in my hands. We both knew we could never dream of the normalcy of a straight relationship, with meeting parents. Even now, we both know neither of us deserves it. Each time I play pretend. I indulge in the fantasy and the false hope we shared. I sent a snap back.

“Tell her that her future daughter-in-law says hi.”

I’m 6 again. It’s recess. We play house. We play pretend. We have a girl as the mom and a girl as the dad and we laugh, knowing that’s not how a family works because “there's no such thing as having two moms, silly.”

I think now of my elementary school days, filled with girls that would play mother and father in our family games, girls who would pretend to kiss each other as a joke, and girls who would kiss each other, telling themselves it was just practice for the real thing, nothing more. Most of them have now “grown out” of it. We’re older and we don’t play games anymore. We don’t have to practice for the real thing because now we have boyfriends who we can kiss and love. I’m living in the past, in a world of games at recess. I am still 6 years old. I wonder if I will be damned for never changing, for staying wretched and dirty and sinful, and if those who grew out of the phase we had as children are superior and right and holy; for they saw what we did as kids as simply what we did as kids.

I am no longer 6 years old. I am not normal, I’m a lesbian. I am not a human being, I am the stereotypes and connotations that come along with the word. There are those who only see my identity as something dirty and sexual. There are others who envy me, who think it’s so much better to be gay, who think my relationships are perfect. They look at me wrong. I wish they could know how it truly is.

She would tell me I reminded her of the moon. I remember her heartfelt messages about wanting to take my pain away and wishing she could make things perfect for both of us. She was kind and sweet and when things were good, I felt like the most important person in the world. We talked about everything with each other. Every picture I took, I sent to her. Everything that happened in my day, I would tell her about. I never stopped thinking or talking about her. I love her with every fiber of my being. The type of love that fills my lungs, the type of love that suffocated me till she was my oxygen. That is not to say that things were perfect. I spent countless nights crying over her. I always felt like I wasn’t good enough or like I was unwanted. It might have been the clinginess, the jealousy, my insecurities, or all three, but I never thought that I was what she wanted. And I never had the courage to talk to her and communicate through our issues.

I miss her more than anything. Your entire world can be taken away from you so quickly. She’s getting help for her struggles now, and we’ve made up, but even though we resolved things, I still feel empty. I wish we were okay. I wish we were normal.

The way that we love is not like others. We love deeply because we live in a world that condemns us. We look for love in a world that does not have love to give. Straight people, normal people, will never know the plight of trying to love in a world that doesn’t love you back. They will never know how tender and gentle and pure a relationship between two girls can be, and they will never know how horrible and ugly and painful that same relationship can be. It’s all the same. The hate and love and wretchedness and beauty is all the same. It's nothing at all. I am not a person with love to give and love to take. I am something to put in a zoo. Because no matter if they see me as a porn category or the lucky girl with a perfect relationship, I am not human. Not to them. I am an animal on display. I am an overgrown 6-year-old.

I want to be 6 again. I want to be normal. I want to forget everything that I know.