#tw:queer

Now I recognize that labels are more useful as a political category than a personally identity, and that’s made me a lot happier. So for political, outward-facing purposes, I’m bisexual, because I have and do feel attraction to people regardless of their gender. And I use that label because I don’t want people outside the queer community to tell me my identity is wrong, or that it doesn’t exist; if they get on my case for being into multiple genders I can use this label to indicate my solidarity with a large community of people who are also like me, and thereby gain the validation and strength of numbers. 

But personally and internal to my community, I am constantly questioning and interrogating my own attraction, and it feels different every day.

And I think that when I was a younger, questioning person, I saw these people claiming to just know deep down that they entirely belonged to a strictly defined sexual orientation that cannot be questioned. So I thought, if I’m questioning my sexuality, then I’m not queer, because real queer people just know. I’m not saying that nobody actually feels that way, as I’m sure many people are entirely sure and comfortable with their chosen labels, but what I recognize now is that my identity is not beyond questioning, in fact questioning is a constant part of my identity. It’s just that I am the one who does the questioning, not str8 people trying to invalidate my attraction.

So I’m by no means against micro-labels or anything you want to do to find community and make yourself comfortable, but I do see a certain defensiveness in trying to lock your identity down into particular boxes and then never interrogating it further. We all deserve the chance to grow and flourish without having our possibilities pruned and cut off, whether by external bigots or by internal policing. 

I think I could write a book just of our history and everything leading up to now and the details of this whole event, but there’s a reason I’m telling this here, in regards to OMGCP, so I’ll try to keep this post focused on that, and I may make a broader post later.

Emma and I have been best friends for almost eight years.

Somewhere in that time I realized that I had fallen for her.

But she was straight, and I could accept that, as long as I still had my best friend.

But recently she had been really confused in regards to her sexuality, something she often vented to me about. Finally she sent me a message and told me that as confused about things as she was, the one thing she knew was that she wanted to be with me, and that she regretted all the time we had wasted, when we weren’t so far apart, to be together.  

And so, on May 4th, after eight years, I started dating my best friend, my soulmate, my first love.  

She goes to school in Oregon and lives in Ohio, while I’m still in North Carolina, so we hadn’t seen each other in person in almost a year.

We had put together all the plans for her to visit this summer. She would come stay with me while my parents were on a cruise with friends from college.

It would be our ‘trial run’, time for just the two of us to live together for a few weeks and decide if this was what we both really wanted. She would be here for her 20th birthday and I had everything planned.

As someone who has always been intimidated by intimacy it was comforting to know that soon I would be able to have my first time being that vulnerable in a relationship, with someone I knew so well and completely trusted.

Right around the time we started dating I introduced her to CP. Basically I bugged her about it until she read it. She fell for it as quickly as I did.  

She told me how much she loved Ransom and Chowder and Parse and Lardo. We gushed over these characters together, and how much we related to them.

I told her how she had Chowder’s innocence, as well as his sudden and surprisingly raging passion. How she had Ransom’s dedication and determination, and his often laughable denial. How she had Nursey’s smooth beauty and need to keep up appearances, stay cool, while managing to be so incredibly goofy and clumsy.  

She insisted that I had Shitty’s silliness and passion for progressive discussion. That I had Holster’s dumb humor, Tango’s wide eyed curiosity. She told me I had Jack’s desire to please and his soft, protected heart.

But she told me I /was/ Bitty. Something I immediately denied.

No. no. That child is too good and pure, too bright.

I’ve always seen myself the most in Jack. The bite of self-doubt, the anxiety and struggle truly opening up to new people.  Yeah I had Bitty’s southern charm and mom friend nature, but not that immediate brightness, that warmth.

But she insisted. She said how Bitty just had that /thing/. She couldn’t exactly name it, but it was warm and soft and irresistible. That Bitty radiated this thing, and so did I.

And y’all my heart melted.

From the moment I first read it, CP just hit home. There was this running similarity to my life that grabbed me. I had told Emma about it before, how it comforted me and gave me hope when I was struggling.

There were parts of every character that resonated with me, but Jack Zimmermann was different. Of all the characters I have felt connected to in my life, Jack hit me the most.

Me, this clumsy, awkward, 5 ft 2, not at all athletic, southern kid identified so fully with this 6 ft 1, gorgeous, robotic, Canadian, star hockey player.

I had always put so much pressure on myself. I didn’t grow up in the shadow of a hockey legend or anything. But I was the only child of two talented, creative musicians. The only grandchild of two teachers, the only one who could further our line of clan McFarlane, the one who would eventually inherit whatever oil money remained.  

My family didn’t expect me to be perfect, they only wanted me to be happy, but I convinced myself that anything less than perfect would let them down. I pushed myself into breakdowns, ended up in the hospital my senior year, and now, months after losing my grandfather, who had instilled me with my love of learning, I was indefinitely leaving school before I ended up back in the hospital. I’d been facing the possibility of not returning to school, or at the least, graduating two years later than expected. I’d stopped doing everything I enjoyed because I was so afraid of mediocrity. But I’d been slowly trying to get better, making a plan, easing myself back into the world. But I still saw myself as so broken and shut off, not someone that a person would want to be with, not good enough yet.

And then Emma tells me she wants to be with me. I fell for a ‘straight’ girl who ended up falling for me too.

And she reads this comic and tells me. “You know, it was kind of like that for me too.” What? “Jack. I kind of had that ‘oh’ moment. I’d wanted this for a while, I just didn’t get it.”

And she was coming to see me, to stay with me. We’d have our first kiss, our Madison.

And we texted each other goodnight, skyped when we could.

And we both loved this story and these characters that we saw so much of ourselves in. We agreed to read the new updates together, whether in person or on skype.

And she told me that I had that /thing/ just like Bitty, that thing that brightened up Jack’s life.

But to me, she had that thing. She radiated that warmth and safety.

She might have said that I was her Bitty.

But to me, to that part of Jack in me, she is mine.

But we hadn’t even had an actual full conversation about whether this is what we really wanted or not. So we waited, we planned to see how things went during this visit and then tell people if we wanted. We knew we couldn’t put it on Facebook, since she wasn’t out at all, and I wasn’t out to my extended family. So for the time being we were our little secret.

A week ago Emma was killed in a collision with a garbage truck in Athens, Ohio, along with her mother, brother, and aunt.

May 18th was the 1st anniversary of Jack and Bitty’s kiss. I reblogged posts, and smiled, because I knew that soon we would be having our own day.

On May 18th I celebrated Jack finally being with his Bitty. When, without my knowing, my Bitty, my Emma, had already been gone for hours.

I was supposed to be picking her up from the bus station tomorrow at 1:55. She’d bought her ticket. We’d complained over and over about how slow the days seemed to go, how we couldn’t wait to see each other.

We started dating on May 4th.

I lost my Bitty on May 18th.

The next day her birthday present came in the mail. I had been planning to surprise her with an outfit I had designed for her. I was sewing the final touches when my parents knocked on my door at 4:36 and my world shattered around me.

I was supposed to see her on May 26th, tomorrow.

Instead I attended her memorial on May 24th , where I couldn’t say that I’d lost my love.

Her mom’s birthday was May 17th, they’d been going out to celebrate, the next day.

Her brother’s graduation was May 21st.

Her 20th Birthday is June 5th.

Like I said, I don’t really know why I’m posting this.

Maybe I need more support, maybe I still feel like this can’t possibly be real, this can’t be my life, it’s too sad, it’s just fictional angst, don’t we post angst so we don’t suffer alone?

Maybe I’m dreading these upcoming weeks that I should have been spending with her.

Maybe I’m trying to explain why Check Please is so confusing to me right now; it’s comfort and warmth, but yet it’s a reminder of something I was so close to having, that’s impossible now.

Maybe I’m trying to scream at the fics where there are close calls, about why I should have gotten that second chance too, she should have gotten it.

Maybe I’m broken about the next update; something new to distract me, but something she’ll never see.

Maybe I just want her to still be a part of this with me, want to make sure she isn’t forgotten by the people who loved the same thing, though she was part of this community for so little time.

Maybe I want everyone to know that after years of knowing that I was her’s if she asked, I finally, for just a moment, knew that she was mine.

Maybe I wanted to thank Ngozi and everyone involved in the fandom for creating this world and filling it with so much love and comfort, and giving us something to share that felt so personal. Something that, though it may be painful now, can still be there for me when I feel like it’s all too much. Something that lets me keep her with me in a way.

Maybe I’m thinking about that post I made recently about how I felt like I wanted a nickname, that Auden and Meagan didn’t exactly feel right for some reason. And how I feel that all again, even more so now, because I’m not the same person I was on May 18th. And no one can say Meagan with her voice anymore, maybe I don’t want to be Meagan without her.

I don’t know.

I just needed to write this, to stop it weighing on my chest. There’s so much more. So many more words, details, feelings, but this part, I wanted to share this part with you.

This is Jack losing Bitty, Holster losing Ransom, Dex losing Nursey, Lardo losing Shitty, Shitty losing Jack, Farmer losing Chowder.

This is Meagan losing Emma. Losing Megma. Losing Meagan and Emma Have Online Adventures. CB# 4 losing CB# 5.

This is me begging you to hold the people you care about close and tell them you love them, even though a part of me hates you for being able to.

This isn’t heartbreak, there’s still something left with a broken heart.

This is having the warmth drained from you.

This is being cut in half and told to keep on walking.

This is lazy writing taking another queer girl for no reason, except this time the one left behind isn’t just going to move on after one good cry.

This is a kid who deserved a happy ending, or at least a chance to fucking have a life.