thelesbianlifestyle.com

Sometimes, I think about switching sides. It would be so easy to do, I often tell myself, to just close my eyes and fit into the notion of me that everyone else already has. People see me and assume. They assume that I’m young, that I’m under-educated, that I’m straight. They look at me and see a pretty girl who looks just like every other girl they know. The figure I’m probably about eighteen and just starting adulthood. They figure I have a boyfriend, somewhere. The people around me converse with me as though that were the case, inquiring about my love life as though it were the thing to talk about. I don’t feed the vultures, but I also don’t shoo them off. I never correct their myopic vision of me. They don’t know that I’m almost twenty-six, will have my MBA in a few months, and that I’m a lesbian. They don’t know that my heart is broken. They think I’m just like they are. And I think maybe, it would be easier to fit that image sometimes.

Somtimes, I think I am the worst lesbian in the world. I put qualifiers on being gay. I tell myself “to be a good dyke I have to…” but I never quite figure out what it takes. I just know that whatever it is, I don’t have it. When my neighborhood had their Out and Proud day recently, I sat in my car and sobbed. I couldn’t bring myself to get out and go mingle with people who are “my own kind.” I wanted the universe to swallow me whole. I am neither out nor proud.

Sometimes, I wish I were normal. I think myself evil for my love of women and that there must be something wrong with me. My mother’s voice fills my ears and I too wonder where she went wrong. I can’t look myself in the mirror. I feel sick at my stomach. I wish that I were dead.

And sometimes…I wake up in the morning and everything is fine. I put on my labrys and my pink sweater and I wander out into the world. I go to The Planet and I get my coffee without shame. I sing along, loudly, to Melissa Ferrick records. I talk with affection about my ex-girlfriend and I feel passionate about community.

And slowly but surely, those days are becoming more and more common. Slowly but surely, I’m going from sometimes being proud to always being accepting of who and what I am.

by Nickie