I Hated Myself so Much For so Long

Dear Mother,

You never spoke with me about sex and sexuality. I guess you just assumed I’d just figure it out myself. I suppose you did give my that book- that incredibly, cisgender, heteronormative book that only went so far as to talk about your developing body and developing emotions. Looking back on it, while it did teach about the body, it didn’t teach me anything about sex or sexuality. At least I had my school to teach me about sex between a biological man and a biological woman. It never talked about anything else. You never talked about anything else. It reinforced that idea in my mind, when I started feeling things for other girls, that it wasn’t normal. That I wasn’t normal. There was something wrong with me, and I had to fix it. By myself. I certainly couldn’t talk to you. I hated myself so much for so long…I always wonder what would have happened if you had just sat me down and said “Hey, girls can like girls and guys can like guys. You can like whoever you want to like, and that’s okay”. But you didn’t. I was on my own with my books and only a tentative grasp on what it meant to be gay.
I did figure it out, eventually. But it took me six years. Six years of self-doubt and questioning, all of which could have been avoided if you had taken the time to have one little talk with me. And in some ways, I’m still questioning. I know my sexuality, but what about my gender? Am I a girl, or is that just what society has told me I’m supposed to be? And what if I don’t want to be a boy either- is it okay for me to be neither? And sex- everyone always told me I was supposed to want sex. Well, what if I don’t want to have sex? What then? There’s so much you didn’t tell me, and I’m learning more and more every day.