The Ramblings of a Nonbinary Teen

Let's be honest, Heartstopper is the gay cultural moment right now, especially for teens. I mean a comic book with a TV show based on it, the cast of said TV show being not entirely made of queer people, but with a better ratio than many shows have. I remember watching it a day after it came out and then watching it again three other times, just to experience the happiness that it gave me.

Watching Joe Locke and Kit Connor play Nick and Charlie as they fall in love with each, discovering so much about themselves in the process, was almost magical. It was the kind of cheesy, adorable teenage romance that was so often reserved entirely for straight kids; because even when queer kids get stories about us, they're always in a semi-sexual context (at the very least).

I remember talking to my friends a couple of weeks ago on Monday after it came out, about how each and every one of us had watched it, and we all loved it. But more importantly, I remember one of my friends saying that she'd watched it and then cried, then watched it again just to cry again. I related to that, I cried too after watching it, but not for the same reasons that I think my friend had been crying.

And I had been right, I hadn't been crying for the same reason that she had. She had been crying tears of happiness, and I had been crying tears of sadness.

The thing is, like every other young queer watching it, projected onto the characters immediately. I wasn't sure which character I was projecting onto, I'm still not, but rather than living vicariously through them like most people, I just started to feel kind of depressed.

For me, Nick and Charlie's sickly sweet romance and adorable progression through their relationship during the first season is just a reminder of everything that I can't have.

I was sitting on my bedroom floor, doing something I can't even remember, and I started crying because of it.

Coming out was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my entire life. I took it in stages, telling my friends and people at school first before talking to my parents and siblings about it, and to this day I haven't told my grandparents and extended family about it because I'm still panicky about how they'll react to it.

I knew that I was queer from a young age, so I came out before I was even in high school. At first, all of that seemed great. I was happier, I was living my life more authentically and in so many ways, it felt like I could finally breathe. Not to say that everything was suddenly perfect once I came out, just that there was a honeymoon period right after I came out.

The issue is that the honeymoon period is very much over, and looking around at my life the way it is now and wondering whether or not coming out at that stage of my life really was the best option.

Not that I don't think I am queer, I definitely am, but I'm starting to feel like the fact that I did come out so young and that I live in such an openly homophobic and transphobic town has closed me down to a couple of experiences that I wanted to have as a high schooler and as a teenager.

I will admit that I am a fiction fanatic and so my ideas of things come from looking through some thick rose-coloured glass, at least that's what I've been telling myself. Since the pandemic, I keep telling myself that no one my age has a typical teenage experience, but that's just one of those lies that I tell myself.

I first began to notice it with dating, my straight friends would tell me to tell the person that I had a crush on that I liked them, but even when I was brave enough to do that, I either got shot down or someone I once thought was perfect turned out to be a massive homophobe. After that, I realized that the only kind of people that would be willing to date me are the people that I'm friends with, and I just don't see them that way.

After that it was everything, no one wanted to really be friends with me because I was "the weird-trans kid". I've never been invited to a party, I can't try out for sports teams or eat in the cafeteria because I know that the world outside of my friends is cruel and unforgiving.

So yeah, I'm well aware that this blog not only has no following and that I don't know the rules of Tumblr, at all, but alas I'm a sucker for an introduction and some additional details. So here are some things I feel you should know if you want to follow this blog:

I'm a teenager, as in a minor, which means that everything that you read is being said by a minor.

I have no idea what I'm going to do on this blog, but most of it is probably going to be complaining about the fact that I live in a very small town full of less than nice people.

My experience as a nonbinary teenager, a nonbinary person and just a human, in general, is not going to be the same as yours, so let's not judge each other based on what we see on the internet.

Identity is complicated, this is my way of sorting it out the best I can.

I'm doing this for me if I'm honest, which means that this might not cater to the broad tastes of the internet all that well, but hey, that's life and ain't it sweet.