Why You Don’t Need To ‘Come Out’ If It Doesn’t Feel Right To You

So, you’ve had that rush of ju ju whilst being served at your local fruit and veggie store by a new female employee. She has tasteful, grungy tattoos on her left wrist and is wearing a bottle green scoop neck T-shirt. It’s just a tad tight across her chest and she looks as though she’s not wearing an underwire.

You’re a fan of soft cups too; your underwear choices are a common denominator.

You can’t make eye contact with her. You feel too overwhelmed by your own little emotional scenario. Oh, you’re blushing. You’re really blushing.

She tells you that the total of your broccoli, spinach, milk and juice comes to $25.00. You look down and fumble your eftpos card from your wallet. You never use PayWave, but you do so now because you’ve forgotten your pin.
You tap, and it beeps back.

You grab the box she has neatly packed our goods into, you lift your eyes up to meet hers, but she’s not looking at you. She’s already beckoning the next customer her way.

You leave.

You squish this feeling down and you worry that you broke up with your boyfriend because you are really a lesbian. You feel shame for this.
This is not the first time you’ve had this feeling of magnetism.

It’s no stranger to your tummy.

It swells and gybes; not often, but sometimes, when provoked.

And you know what, it’s ok.

Attraction is fluid. It’s outside of your control. Your emotional world is far more complex and wayward than you will ever really appreciate; than any of us will ever appreciate.

And that’s ok.

Blushing doesn’t mean you’re gay. It doesn’t mean you need to label it, pathologise it, make it into something for the sake of understanding it better; conveying it to your counsellor. It was an exchange, a casual one. These happen sometimes.

You squishing them away, pushing them down because you fear the label and all that connotes isn’t really fair. To you.

But it’s ok. Queer people have experienced too many decades of oppression, and you’re afraid that you will become oppressed and the subject of a barrage of questions, judgements and assumptions because you identify with a label.

But baby, maybe attraction is not as simple as that.

Labeling, categorising, packaging that moment as black or white, deciding based on that moment that you are that, not that, maybe that’s not your journey.

Attraction is attraction, and you’re allowed to feel the way you do. There is no need for you to justify it, explain it to anyone else, or chastise yourself for feeling what you feel.

Stay true to it, breathe into it, explore it and maybe you will find yourself lying next to someone that loves you more than you ever could have conceived. Maybe they will have breasts and maybe they will have a penis.

If the labels are unhelpful, too charged and cumbersome for you right now, then fuck them. You’re not a bad person.