'Cause everyone wants to feel like someone cares

What was taken from us this week was our right to determine for ourselves how and when we should share our relationship and queer identities with the world. The truth is, every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms and their own timeline. They also have the right to choose not to come out at all. The forced conformity of the closet cannot be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it. This isn't about shame. This is about privacy and the fundamental right of self-determination, which are exactly the principles on which the struggle for queer liberation has always been fought. But there's another truth that's much simpler.

Zahra blinks, presses her lips together, and makes a noise like she’s being strangled. (...) “Would it make any difference at all if I told you not to see him again?” Alex looks over at Henry, looking rumpled and nauseated and terrified at the corner of the bed. “No.”

But there is another truth that's much simpler: I fell in love with a person who happens to be a man, and that man happens to be a prince. He has captured my heart and made my life immeasurably better.

Bonus: