If You Still Recognise Me

Maybe it's the gay friends I have but they're all like... Sex! Exclamation mark exclamation mark! Which is extremely wonderful for them - I'm not saying they should be any other way - but. They're good at casual sex. I can't even imagine having it. I don't think any of my friends could put up with dating a guy who doesn't want to have sex. It's hard enough feeling like you're an outsider with most people because you're gay! And so you have to work harder to find your people. But you do it, you meet other gay guys, you manage to become friends with some of them, and then it still turns out you don't fit in. You're still different. What do you do then?

And I lie down and look at the ceiling, and I wonder how adults learn to love with this feeling that the past is always growing bigger, that you're always losing mroe of yourself to it.

There's nothing like meeting someone and feeling comfortable with them instantly. That to me is the closest thing we have to magic in the world. The inexplicable connection that we just feel, right away, to some people, when with the vast sea of humans we have to work hard to get anywhere at all.

I didn't truly believe it back then. That I deserved to be seen. I do now, though. I do. And being seen requires being open about myself. Joan looks at me, soft, patient. I want to be seen.

As a child, I was possessed by a clear conviction that marriage had nothing to do with me. I still feel like that now. But Joan is walking backwards off my doorstep, and my heart is an emptied bowl, squeaky clean and cupped in both hands, and I want to hold it out to her and say, "Tim faan." More rice, please.

maybe loving someone shouldn't feel like missing them. like you're constantly reaching for something that isn't close enough.

But it’s not impossible to find your people. People who can understand you—they exist. And the right people—the right person—won’t be putting up with you. They’ll want you exactly as you are.

I would be delighted if one day there’s no need for labels at all, but as long as I’m marginalized for being queer, I’m always going to find comfort and strength from knowing that there’s a word for who I am and people out there who share the same identity.

I know how insubstantial a person can become when they’re drained by the wrong kind of love.

I wonder if Ada would be able to feel the sapphic vibes if she could see the things she and I wrote to each other through the eyes of someone who was an outsider to our friendship.

But sometimes you fall in love with someone, and over time they... They either become, or they turn out to be, a completely different person. And, by the time you see it, it's too late.

Po Po's proud of her memory. Sometimes she tells stories about Mum's childhood at dinner, and, when Mum says she remembers something differently, Po Po always insists that she's right and Mum's wrong.

I wonder if it's sinking in, how the dish that Uncle Kevin loves the most has become Po Po's own favourite in the eight years that she didn't hear a word from him.

I would've listened. You could've told me anything.' 'You say that now, but I don't know. It would've been a lot for you as an eleven-year-old.' 'You were eleven too! And you had to deal with it all on you own.

I like that you give me the space to just be quiet if I want, and that's the kind of space that makes me want to speak. And you always listen to me. I'm nervous a lot of the time that I don't have anything important to say. When I opened this blank card and I started writing, I had to believe that what I'm saying is important enough to write down and give to you.

Maybe I know that what I've been clinging on to is that perfect glass dome my heart lives in when I'm crushing on somebody, when I get to linger in the sweetness of how I feel about them at a distance. If I don't tell people I like them, I don't give them the power to hurt me. If the glass dome is cracked even a fraction, who knows what could get in?

Like everyone else in fandom, Ada and I say I love you to each other like it's punctuation. But lately I've been finding it harder to say it to her because I've discovered that I mean it more seriously than I thought. Even just typing those three words requires an effort that feels deeply and nauseatingly physical, like reaching into my own ribcage and turning my lungs inside out.