I love women.

I have tried to embrace the straight-life for the majority of my life because of the fear-based discursive frameworks that saturated my mind when I was a child. Childhood paradigms have a tendency to echo throughout our adult lives unless we change the script and decide on something truly different. We can break apart all of our childhood beliefs and choose what we want and don’t want to perpetuate as adults. As a child, I was blocked from truly blossoming into my queer nature by false stories of where safety lay in our society.

The Straight-Life got me three solid marriage proposals as an adult, several more as a “high-risk” teenager. My internal response was always much the same: Thrilled to be fitting into a societally acceptable box, despite my strong Rebel archetype, but empty and devastated at not being able to express my true nature—of which involves being absolutely obsessed with and taken with women. Women are absolutely fascinating to me.

Ever since I was a small child I saw women as being far more beautiful than men, and two of the three men who proposed to me in my adult life where “effeminate”: big eyes, long hair, and svelte bodies. My intrapersonal, philosophical stance was that gender/sex shouldn’t matter, so why couldn’t I be with a man, even if I was attracted to women more fiercely?

Liberal and convinced that I could make it work with anyone, while fully harboring the distinct belief that, “You don’t fall in love with gender, you fall in love with a person,” I tried in vain to be happy. But, I was living a shell of my true self by living my life as “straight.” I even became unhealthily preoccupied with reuniting myself with a young man who was 21 years old after we had dated and planned a family together. The pull of wanting to be safe in a society that, at the time, was not as friendly towards the queer scene was so profound that Darwin would have been proud of my efforts to stay clear of what I believed was certain societal death.

Strong beliefs of any kind that operate to compromise our true self are inherently destructive to our entire society. Not being wholly who we are (except perhaps unless you are Dexter…in which case there are limits to my train of thought here) leaves us all deprived.

We can preach any version of controlling, limiting vernacular, but when it comes down to it, the best life is a life we want to live. Whether we have not allowed ourself to garden because it seems a “waste of time—as Mother always said,” or we have become a doctor because of our family’s desires rather than pursuing a career in art, we have the opportunity to open our hearts to new beginnings.

Here is a little project that may help with breaking through to the other side:

Consider doing a gentle inventory of the life patterns that might be perpetuating harm out of compliance, habit, or fear. Dig deep, and meditate on anything that might not be serving you––commit to discovering the destructive automatic pilot you might be feeding. With this inventory, see what behaviors you want to change in effort to lean fully into your true self as the beautiful adult you have become. Pick and choose the parts of yourself you want to keep and synthesize. Filling your incredible lungs up with the air that supports us all, envision a wealth of white light healing the parts of you that serve you no longer. Imagine a life without all the ropes tying you into being someone you are not. Smile knowing that you can be free.

My straight-person experiment finally ended when I was 31 years old. My radical shift, for the past two years, has been to reject any advances or musings about men and only invite and entertain possible romantic connections with women. The first morning I did this, I met someone.

Suffice to say, my first kiss with this woman was more powerful than any kiss with a person of the male sex—not because of a lack of love, lack of trust, or a lack of absolute captivation I had with these men. But in kissing my first woman in my adult life, this act symbolized and resounded as my first step to being the person I actually am—not what I thought I needed to be for others. I am happy to say that from here on out: I am a bonafide queer woman who will always be grateful for the gift it is to live my truth as I say, “I love a woman.”

~

Author: Jasper Faolan

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flickr/Melissa Scobee