pride.

on becoming and continuing

content warning: this piece will contain homophobia.

Late last summer I came out to my mother on a visit home when we were going home from her church event. I told her that I was queer; that I liked girls in addition to liking boys and I was always this way, and waited for her reaction. I braced myself for outburst or anger; instead what followed was only a gentle silence. She leaned forward and, calmly and urgently, told me that that part of me needed to die. She said it in a tone that I know genuinely meant no malice; to her it was only a matter of self preservation for me. I know that, and yet it still shocked me.

My parents don’t read my work and I always said I preferred it that way. That I have wrestled with and dissertated upon my identity, the topic of queerness, is very clear in most of my books — yet it felt too intimate, too exposed, to share with them before I was ready. I waited, ten years after I first knew, when I had read, watched, seen, witnessed, even written pieces of media depicting this critical coming out scene, this resolution — if only I studied it enough I knew I could make it mine.

That moment came and with it disappeared entire future versions of myself. I knew that this reconciliation I imagined for myself would not be happening in this timeline or universe. I felt foolish for hoping for it, for hoping that all that has happened the ten years from when I was a closeted sophomore witnessing the Supreme Court ruling, would have made for a more understanding or accepting reaction.

But in a way, those years — and all the years before — have mattered. I still remember seeing Ash by Malinda Lo in my middle school library and picking it up. The Miseducation of Cameron Post. The Half of It and Saving Face. My friends’ beautiful, poignant, stirring books. I have carved out a life surrounded by found family in my home and in their homes and in book events and at bar tables that spill to the side of the street in the summer. I have gotten to write the stories of my heart and share them with readers who have in turn told me about their lives and experiences. And all of this is possible only due to the work that came before; all the work that was done by the people who sought joy and were punished for it; who have had those same isolating conversations with people they loved and lived a life that defied them, and created works that have gotten banned and fought those bans. Those pillars of my life allowed me to walk away from that conversation knowing that it was just one conversation. That it wasn’t the verdict on the life that I could or could not live, because look: here are all the possibilities that have been created for me and that I have created for myself. Here are the universes of joy that are real. This is why I fight so hard against book bans and why I create. I want those lifelines to exist for others too.

I could say much more about this month but here is what it means to me this year; it has always and continually brought me affirmation that I am meant to exist as I am, that pride stems from love, and all there is around me is love. I and my work will never forget that.