Tag: queerness

Content note: this piece contains discussion of heteronormativity and references to trauma.

Sometimes people come into your life when you need them and then leave when you don’t.

You might feel like you still need them. Perhaps they created the illusion of need. But you don’t. If they left, it’s because the lesson has been given, and you don’t need them anymore.

I don’t need you, I never did, and my ancestors told me that. Told me as I lay crying on the bathroom floor, heart split open, body suspended over a cold void. NO, they said from deep within, causing me to sit up and listen. You don’t need this one, you never did, and he will not break you. This will not break you.

Cry for yourself, for the part of you that was hurt, for the wounded child. Cry over your broken heart. Cry over the broken promises, the broken trust, the lies, and the duplicity. But don’t cry over the man. The man isn’t worth crying over. The man isn’t worth a second thought. Let him go. Let him recede into the fog.

Cry for your broken-hearted self. Cry for your betrayed child self. Cry for your survivor self. But don’t cry for the man. The man doesn’t care about your tears. The man was never here, not really. The man was never real, not really. The man was a figment of your & his imagination, nothing more than the illusion of presentation. Cry to heal yourself, but don’t shed a tear for someone who wasn’t ever really here, ever really real. The pain is real, but it’s the only thing that’s real. Everything else was an illusion.

Don’t cry for an illusion, cry for the violation. That was the word that came into your mind soon after: violation. When someone lies to you about everything, about who they are, it’s a violation. Cry for the violation. Heal the violation. Don’t cry for the violator.

Heal your broken heart, your frightened child, your survivor. Heal all parts of yourself. Cry over the pain and then transform the pain. Transform it into something else. Growth. Healing. Lessons. Learning. Beauty. Community. Love. Compassion. And then see the pain for what it was: a necessity, a catalyst, something to get you moving, something to get you up and out, something to get you thinking differently, living differently. See the pain as a gift, a gift to get you going, a gift to get you seeking something better, something more, something different.

You are meant to be building community. You are meant to be living in friendship. You are meant to be loving platonically with all your heart. You are meant to be living differently. You are meant to be redefining family. You are meant to be living queerly.

The problem is that you are a queer person who keeps trying to build a heteronormative life, and that just isn’t going to work. You wanted to build a family with a man and a dog, but there were already some men and a dog who are your family right over here. You didn’t have to go out and find that. It was already here.

I want to prioritize and centre platonic love. I want to prioritize and centre community. I want to prioritize and centre romantic love with women and non-binary people. I want to redefine the meaning of family to mean whatever I need it to be. I need to do things differently because I am different, so the heteronormative script isn’t going to work for me. That was the lesson and now I’m here. I’m here where I’m meant to be.

The music is beating and I am typing and I am reading and this place is being. Here and now, now and here. And it’ll all be, it’ll all be, it’ll all be what it’s meant to be. I’ve been given another chance to lift off the shackles of heteronormativity, and I’m going to take it, and I’m not going to look back this time.