Author Anonymous

So, when I was 17 I came out to my mother.  I had been up that night thinking, listening to a lot of Macklemore, and was finally ready to come to terms with myself.  While I had been out to my best friend for a few years, I had never told anyone else, so this was a big deal.  I went to her and woke her up, sat next to her, told her I liked boys... and girls, and cried a lot when she said she’d love me anyway.

Well, the entire experience was so awkward that I never brought my sexuality up again, out of respect for her.  She said she didn’t exactly understand, so I didn’t force it on her.  However, it did give me the confidence to start college openly bisexual.

Fast forward three years, and I’m 20 and have been in a relationship with a guy for three years.  My sexual preference somehow has been assumed to fit that label.

Today, my mom was talking about my sister’s bisexual girlfriend, and said she feels bad for her because bisexual girls never stay that way--it’s just a phase.  She proceeded to recount the night I came out to her while laughing--”do you remember that?” “such a drama queen.”  She proceeded to make fun of me to my face leaving me defenseless.  I laughed along, like I haven’t in years, forced and hoping that she wouldn’t look at me long enough to see the fear in my eyes.

In reality, dating a guy didn’t magically make me straight.  My sexuality has even gone as far as to cause relationship problems, since it simply provides another outlet for jealousy or an excuse for a lack of a sex life.  Not only have I not “gone straight,” but I’ve talked about my sexuality so openly and regularly with my boyfriend--my best friend--that I forgot there were people who still didn’t approve or “understand.”

You don't give her space when she needs it

You lose your temper forgetting that she grew up in a home where yelling was followed by swinging fists

You fake apologies

You forget and never forgive hers

You remind her that your relationship is nowhere near as perfect as your last one

You fake a punch to intimidate her

You fake the truth by telling your mother you broke things off

You overplay pain and sorrow so that she draws you back in every time

If there's an error

in my calculations

then correct me.

But I think that one month

plus another

equals enough time to tell

one relationship from another.

I think that two amazing, soul-filled nights

plus two breathtaking months

is greater than anything I've ever felt before,

but still less than the love of a lifetime.

However,

I do believe

that there two months

steadily approaching infinity along the y-axis

could take me to the stars.

Every problem has a beginning

but not always an ending,

an answer.

I was born

to meet a boy

who writes love letters

on the backs of my tickets out of town.

To find the man

who rushes after me

to the station

just in case I look over my shoulder.

You see,

a person's compass

points them "home".

I haven't found mine yet.

So instead of pointing me back to bed,

where you'd much rather I lie

in your arms

where you know I'll be when you wake.

My needle

points toward the horizon,

begs me to chase the sunset,

to follow the light as it kisses the world goodnight,

in case it should tuck me into a bed to call my own.

I was born to be a runner,

just like you were born to love them,

and be left behind.

But what did fate decide

I'm supposed to do

when you and I are spending midnight

somewhere between the tracks and the stars

I needed someone tonight, anyone.  I had no one and nothing except tears streaming down my face and thoughts of suicide swirling in my head.

I needed help.  I needed a way out.  Yours was the first face I saw.

I messaged you, fumbling over my words to get the story out, pleading for advice although we hardly talk.  A little bit of me has loved a little bit of you for a while now, and I knew anything you had to say would mean everything.

It was the wrong moment.  You didn't get it, and I had to calm down on my own.

It wasn't until just now, hours later, that I got your message.  Midway through the very first sentence, my stomach dropped and I was back to tears.

"You are a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman who has such a bright future ahead of her."   

People always make fun of the way I talk, the way I describe things, the language I use.  It makes me so insecure that sometimes I'd rather bite my lip than speak out, regardless of how much I want to say it.

You see, I didn't get the life you did.  While you were watching cartoons, I was watching Oprah.  You went to daycare, I went to work with my Grandma.  You got to read Harry Potter while I was shoved a Bible.  You were able to curl up with Goosebumps on a rainy day, while I got Little Women.

I'm sorry that I use unnecessarily long words.  I'm sorry my sentences get too long and detailed.  I'm sorry that I use phrases you've probably only ever heard from your grandparents.

I'm sorry I make you uncomfortable.

My pumpkin carriage Ferris,

We had a thing going.  We were the ultimate teenage romance.

You were the leader of the pack I fell into--I didn't think much about it, as I went after your friend.  He never noticed, but you were always there.  He'd turn down my offers, but you'd take a lap around the school with me during our lunch break, promising to keep me safe and walking alongside me.  I always admired you and your willingness to defend others, to be heard (it's something I've never quite attained) but there was something different about being with you.

There was something different about going out to lunch, watching you from the passenger seat of a car, or across a table full of your friends, or atop a slide at the park.  Our park.  The one you would take me to after lunches and dinners, when we would just take in the breeze and cling to our moment away from the world.

The first time you took me home was October.  The football game had ended, and you'd found time enough to ask me if I wanted to go out for ice cream.  We tried a few places before we ended up at Seven Eleven, you paying for my container, and me trying to slip the money mine had cost into your pocket.  We drove.  To nowhere in particular.  We were living in the moment with my clothes on your floorboard, Ed Sheeran's voice carrying on the wind, and your letterman's jacket around my shoulders.  ((That was the night when we got pulled over because the cops thought you were drunk, when you were really just drunk on me.))

It took you until the night before homecoming to ask me out.  I knew you had been trying to do it all week, so I kept purposely pissing you off and ruining the moment.  You probably thought I was just being my slightly-bitchy self.  I was really just terrified and all out of ways out.  You asked me out at 11:00, just after I had left the football game, over text message.  If I had any mind I would have said "no" to you.  I didn't.

The morning of was a breakdown, of course, me crying and cursing all over the house because you didn't inform me that it was a group date with your friends.  Because of that, I made us a bit late for the photo shoot.  It was the first time you'd put your arm around me, when we sat on the dock (because I refused to take a chance with a romantic shot in the unsteady boats).  The photographer caught it.  Looking back, we looked so happy together.  I wish I could have kept that smile on your face.  You gave me my bouquet when we got back to the car (I was so upset that you spent the money on me, and I'm sorry if I didn't thank you enough) we all went to eat at the diner, and you had a stroke of luck and beat me at Pac Man.  Then we split up and went our separate ways.  They went to the dance.  We went to our park, I took off my heels, and we walked around town in the moonlight--spent an hour hanging off of one another, dodging stray cats, and telling our life stories.  There was a chill in the air, my shoes dangling from my right hand, and your jacket around my shoulders.  It was perfect without even including the dance.  We made it just in time, though, when they were still playing oldies like Earth Angel.  We had our second slow dance that night--to the same song you'd spontaneously given me my first slow dance to freshman year... Hero was our song.  ((My friend said that she saw us dancing from across the room, mentioned how cute it was that I was flustered and smiling at the ground.  You still make me feel that way, sometimes.))

The day after homecoming we went to the local theme park.  I rode in the front of your mom's car (admittedly missing your Jeep) bickering with you over the radio and my energy drink as my friends joked around in the backseat.  It rained a bit, and I talked too much (maybe you were right about me not needing the caffeine) but it was nice.  When we got to the park, we rode about two rides before I crashed.  I took a power nap, sprawled across your lap and chest on a bench while they road their two more coasters.  The rest of the day was great--we split up from the pack, explored on our own, and I asked if I could call you my boyfriend while we waited in the center of the park.  You said yes and I kissed your cheek.  Your blush was the most adorable thing I'd seen all day.  That night, I protected you from the clowns as you protected me from the gas masks.  It was the first time I had enjoyed the Halloween season since the fourth grade.  It was a rush.

 By my birthday, my sole purpose in life was to make it clear that I wanted you to kiss me.  We never quite got our chance.  Between performances and chaperons on the bus ride home, the most I got was holding your arm close and a kiss to my hair.  You made up for it the next time we went out for the night, opening the door for me in the drive and letting me kiss you goodnight for as long as I wanted.  I wanted forever, but  settled for two minutes.

Our relationship was a blur.  It started our strong.  It started out young.  You Jeep at midnight, curled over the center console and into each others arms.  I-Hop at eleven.  The back roads at all hours.  You and I were young in every sense of the word.

My favorite was the night of the hurricane.  I pulled a few cards and strings, got you over to my house and eating midnight snacks with my family.  Your mom was out of town and the weather was awful, but I convinced you to stay.  I woke up a bit before you.  I sat on the other end of the room, reading a novel for English and watching you stir in your sleep.  When you finally woke up, I sat down on the other end of the couch and the first thing you did was slide over to cuddle me and kiss good morning.  We made breakfast for my family (well, you cooked and I managed not to make a disaster of the eggs) and kissed in the kitchen when no one was watching and it just felt so domestic.  I wanted it.  I wanted all of it.

But just as youth fades, so did ours.  You stopped coming around.  The most  we talked was a few texts shot back and forth a day, and maybe a half-hour of conversation at night.  I cried a month before the breakup, suddenly realizing that I hadn't actually spent time with you in weeks.  It just wasn't working out anymore.  We'd spent months together, and you still weren't letting me in.  I was running out of topics for one-sided conversations and ways to get you just as swept off your feet as I was with you.  You stopped taking me out.  One day you finally complained about the cost of driving me on our little adventures, so I stopped asking.  You said that you wanted to fix us, but you just didn't have the time.  You offered to start driving me home, but that first day you were still so jittery that it was taking so long with the traffic.  You were skipping practice for me--I was becoming a problem.  I didn't let you keep driving me home, either.

It was the week before Christmas, when I broke up with you by the parking lot.  I gave the speech just as I'd rehearsed and you reacted better than I expected.  I think you even gave me a hug goodbye and promised to still see me later to exchange presents.  That never happened.  What did actually happen was that you ignored me for the next sixth months, looking around me when I tried to say hello, ignoring me when I took my seat at the lunch table, pushing me out of your life completely.  I pulled you aside once, asking if we could still be friends.  You said you needed time.  I gave you time.  Enough time for you to start dating our mutual friend and then some.  You still don't like to talk with me.

You apologized once for being an asshole as did I for being the way I was.

But there are still some nights that I look back on.  Like on one of those first late night conversations--I admitted to you I'd always seen you as the Ferris Bueller type... brave, spontaneous, outgoing.  You responded (over my insistence that I was a Cameron) that you'd always seen me as the Sloane type.  It took you months later, on a silent ride home, to admit that I really was a Cameron after all.  You really weren't a Ferris, either, but I never quite told you that.

Whoever you are, I still love you on these late nights--for what you were to me.  A first dance, a first date, a first love.  And if you would ever give me the chance to speak, I'd love to thank you for that and apologize that I couldn't have given you any more.

Love always,

I know it's taboo, something one may think but should never say aloud, but I hope my kids are straight.

There, I said it, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Hell, I wish I was straight.

I don't want my kids to know what it's like to grow up in a world where people are always fighting because of you.  What it's like to be the accidental child, with half of the people around defending your life and the other half cursing your birth.  I don't want my children to have to fight for their basic human rights, and then defend their rights to an equal life.

I want them to be happy.

I never want them to worry if they're staring too long, if they're flirting with someone who is straight and might take offense.  I don't want them to learn about a God who loves 'all his little children,' then return to the same church to hear how their own creator hates them for something he instilled them with.  I don't want them to know what it's like to cry into the darkness at two in the morning, sobbing with guilt and each choked breath feeling like two lungs full of water.

I don't want them to ever know self loathing like I have.

So you can go on with your day, turning up your nose at me, and saying that you will never hope for a sexuality, only love your children regardless.

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who existed only inside of a Jeep at 12 AM.  She was quiet but told her life story somewhere along the back roads; he listened.  He was quieter, full of secrets not ready to be shared; she understood and helped him make new ones.

Like having a first date beneath the Eiffel tower, and a first kiss on a front porch step.  Feeling like the only people in the world on a bus at midnight, and coming alive in an empty field.

They kept secrets.

Secret names at burger joints, ordering under aliases.  Secretly parked in the lot for an hour, too much warmth in each others arms and not enough in a single bed.  A secret park to escape to, hours holding each other atop the slide as the autumn leaves changed around them.