Unforgiven

“you should’ve” people are a terrible breed critiquing, opining, 20/20 hindsighting without realising that their verminous words exert such permanent hurt upon those who yearn for an unreal reality a yearning based on mere fleeting moments of the earth’s turning decisions made in earnest amidst a host of rationales of rhymes and reasons

“you should’ve” people live in a realm of what-ifs arrogant self-righteousness completely eclipses the split-seconds it would take to assess context, or a face any semblance of tact they may once have possessed vanishes behind their greed-fuelled need to proceed to speak their beliefs that somewhere along the way, you’ve made a mistake and without pause they’ll explain with a smile on their face

“you should’ve dated that boy in college,” they’ll say “you should’ve stuck with that job in the city” “before you got that tattoo you should’ve thought about how it will affect you at interviews” “i liked your hair before, you should’ve never cut it short” “you should’ve gone to the other school that accepted you” “you should’ve kissed him before he left, you know” “you should’ve told her how you felt”

these words tumble from the mouths of the spineless the backseat drivers of the lives of others they judge and they sneer safe from the fear that they might one day be proven wrong

“you should’ve” people pass judgement on actions that cannot be undone on moments from which every individual has learnt they must move on moments suppressed deep within psyches words or stutters slurred or muttered a car engine starting, fingertips parting segments of lives that shape everything to follow

some can function with this concept of divergence paths that branch and break and bend but some of us are tormented by words left unsaid by instants we replay in our heads we don’t need “you should’ve” people to remind us we’re broken

Like they think all we want is to be treated like everyone else. To not be ostracized for being who we are. And they’re right.

But then they take this goal they think we have and somehow in their tiny Het brains it translates to “they want to be seen as straight people, they want to conform, they want gay to become a meaningless label”

So then ally culture becomes “I don’t see gay people as any different, I don’t care about sexuality, the only difference between us is who we love etc.”

And they completely miss the point that we loooove being gay. We love pride, we love talking about our sexuality and how it affects us (if we’re safe to do so) we love having a sense of community and belonging.

What’s gross about this mindset is it stems from the fact that straights cannot even fathom treating gay people like their equals without erasing our identity and forcing us to conform. “I don’t care about your sexuality, I still love you” is false allyship, and in the long term does more harm than good. What gay people truly want is “I see your sexuality, I recognize that your struggles and goals are different than mine, and I’m still going to treat you like a human and give you the rights you deserve”