in my heart and in my head

Portals sounds like how it felt to shed toxic relationships and the things they’d convinced me about my identity, and step into the more feminine parts of myself again. I’m not a woman in the traditional sense of the word. But I am connected to it. And I can be proud of that too. I spent so long around people who made me feel like if I wasn’t androgynous or masculine presenting, then my queer identity wasn’t valid somehow. That if I expressed interest in traditionally feminine things, then I was somehow lesser. Like I was pretending. I’ve never pretended. My identity is my own, and I owe no one an explanation. I do not need to go out of my way to put my queerness on display in the ways others expect. I am who I am. Regardless of what I’m wearing or what I’m doing. 

A large part of this train of thought has come from how much more connected to my fertility I’ve been. My body can create life. And that’s fucking amazing. That fact isn’t inherently feminine, but it connects to my femininity for me. But I could never express the love I have for that part of myself before. Because then I must “not be non-binary, I must really be a cis-woman.” Fuck that. You and your internalized misogyny can fuck out of here. Feminine does not equal not queer.