Trauma Doesn't Make You Stronger

 Love truly is a miracle. For all my life, I know I have felt a lot of love for the people that have been close to me and important to me, and I know that some of them have truly loved me too, still do to this day, or have once loved me but no longer do. The funny thing about love, though, is that there are many different kinds, many different flavors of love out there, but we don't talk about all of them as much as we should. Maybe that's how you get confused oblivious idiots like myself, someone who does not see that they way they feel about the gender society tells them to be attracted is love, yes, but it's a different kind of love. Someone whose entire family have all known that their child is gay, while they are none the wiser. Someone who gets jealous of a dear friend of theirs when they tell them they have a partner of some kind, even though the two have never met in person. And someone who then meets this person, invites them over from all across a whole-ass ocean,...

 When I was 17, I met this guy. He was a year older than me, a drummer in the school's band. I got good vibes from him, he had a welcoming look in his eyes and a warm smile on his lips. He was funny, tall, and kind of pretty too. I liked singing in the choir for the band when he was playing the drums, he was a virtuoso at that. After the concert the choir and the band organized for the last school semester that year, I didn't really see the guy around that much. He had his friend groups, he was getting ready for the matriculation exams that were approaching him next autumn. But I was left thinking about him for another year, pondering on one specific thing. "I'd love to get to know him better." When I was 18, I met this guy – again. It was the sophomore year dance practice, we had like five weeks until the ball. I had asked one of my friends to dance with me, and I had naturally assumed the role of the guy when dancing. But this one time, my friend couldn't ...

 It's taken a very long time for me to be comfortable with the act of sexual intimacy. I'm on the asexual spectrum, and sex has never been at the forefront of what I value the most in a relationship. It has never been a dealbreaker for me in any way, and lack of sex to me does not signify a failing relationship. But not all of that disregard is rooted in me being ace. A small part of it is due to learned – or taught to be more precise – patterns of thinking.  When I hit puberty at the age of 11 just like my mom, the girls in the locker rooms taught me to be ashamed of my body. They wrongfully violated my personal space and harassed me for something I absolutely could not control. As my body was changing at a rapid rate, I felt even more helpless at the mercy of my Friends, because this was something that was fundamentally decided FOR me – by my genetics.  And here I was, being turned into a public spectacle for discreetly grabbing a pad out of my backpack before going to ...

 When I was eleven years old, I got my very first professional sketchbook. It was marketed to be specifically for artists that were looking for that authentic manga feel to their art – it even had a silly image of some anime boy on the cover. I was so excited to start drawing like a professional, to have a legit sketchbook with legit manga lineart pens, just for drawing all those pretty anime girls. At the time, I was reading a relatively newly translated shoujo manga. I loved the story, I loved the main character, she was very pretty. I ended up drawing my versions of the covers of the manga volumes with her drinking tea and holding a whisk and a bowl in her hands in that new sketchbook I had just bought. As the story progressed and I got to know the characters even better, I found myself really liking one of the love interests. He was a sweet guy, somewhat pretty, and very relatable to me. I saw myself in him a lot as an isolated and abused kid who was afraid of literally everyon...

 When I first came out to my parents, I was 16 years old and I told them I identified as bisexual. My father didn't react in any particular way, but my mother said something immediately those words had left my lips: "I thought you were a full-gay!" The situation had been so nerve-wracking to me that I waited until my childhood best friend was visiting me, so that I could have her as my emotional support. It wasn't that I was scared of my parents' reactions; I knew they would accept me and love me all the same. It was just the moment of actually saying those words out loud and admitting to it – to myself as much as to my parents. Admit that I liked girls.  At 16, I thought that I was bi, but that turned out to be completely false. Being in a committed relationship with a man for over three years taught me a lot about myself, mainly the differences between platonic and romantic love, and what sexual attraction even means. Because that, I knew, was something I did no...