I’m a lover. I always have been and I hope I always will be. When I was younger I would never confess this, because I had a crush on a straight girl (who I convinced myself was really actually bisexual… she was not) and she was the opposite of a romantic. She once told me that she thought Valentine’s Day was inane, and anyone who celebrated it was shallow and a victim of capitalism. And because I valued her insight (read: I wanted her to like me as much as I liked her) I would sit next to her on the train station platform ardently agreeing, and pretending that I was not, in fact, a lover of all things love.
Back then, my queerness was a secret to everyone including myself. Even when I wrote her several letters for her birthday (that I now realise were literal love letters), I told myself that it was a platonic love. That the warmth that washed over me at the sight of her was not attraction.That my daydreams about holding her hand meant nothing.