If an old far may say something...I’m 25 and I remember 18 like it was yesterday. Let me tell y’all a story. It’s a weird one with mixed moral messages so hold on tight. Also I’m real high. Like real. Real high.
When I was 18 my high school had a graduation trip as per tradition. I told my crush, who was also a boy, that I liked him. But not because I chose to. Well, kind of. You see, we were very drunk that first night, someone had managed to sneak alcohol into the hotel room. And we started playing truth and dare.
I wanted to tell him that night, because alcohol. But before I even seriously put the want into planning, someone asked him if he has a crush on someone.
And of course he begrudgingly admired and said that he was dating my best friend. My gay ass started tearing up an ungodly amount. Jesus did I cry. By the time I could come back to my senses I had been drunk crying for two hour and maxed out of my prepaid cellphone plan crying to my second best friend (to whom I think in my drunken stupor I apologized to incessantly about her not being my first best friend lmao. High school was wild).
So that was how the whole school knew I was gay & had a crush on this one specific guy.
This thing fucked me up and made me plunge into full blown clinical depression. My ex best friend was the only one who knew that I was gay, and that I had a long time crush on this particular guy. So I lost my best friend and my safety for being gay in a religious school and my crush. The weight of this trauma burdened me for years until well into college when finally I found a therapist.
And now like seven years later (Jesus fuck) I finally found happiness. Because I wouldn’t be my gay activist self if I didn’t go through this whole thing. If I didn’t get through school with the pure spite of wanting to beat my best friend at everything she does, I wouldn’t be in my PhD program right now. I know myself very well now and I would’ve never had the courage to come out at all. It’s so corny and I hate to say it, but I think that l really wish I had had the courage to have chosen to tell that guy that I liked him, by my self. I’d be in control and I’d be able to think
“hey this was wild and shit it’s unrequisited what did I do and how do I never do that again”
Instead of
“Wow. This wasn’t me. This is stupid. It’s unfair and i was meant to be this sad.”
Wow man I just typed out my whole memoir while inebriated with some ~