I feel like I’m in a weird, often conflicting, headspace about my gender and sexuality lately. On one hand, this is the first time that I have ever fully embraced myself as being queer as fuck and I am doing so during what is undoubtedly my sexual prime. So, yay!
On the other hand, I’m a chubby, hairy, 30-year-old, hypersexual, non-binary queer who is undoubtedly NOT in their physical health prime and who is still uncertain of how “sexy” looks or feels as an enby. So… yay?
Of course, I’m fortunate to have found a partner who not only accepts that I am queer and trans but who is queer and trans themselves AND whom I share a loving, non-monogamous relationship with. That’s something that some may never experience, or may only experience after a stream of abusive, invalidating connections in which they are pressured to continue hiding their authentic selves. This can last for decades, with people not coming out until they are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, or even older.
Yet I often find myself in spaces dominated by young queer and trans people in their early twenties and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there is a part of me that envies them for having the opportunity to explore themselves while they are that young.
I feel like I’ve missed my youth. Almost entirely.
While growing up, I watched as peers around me stumbled awkwardly about with oftentimes violently cisnormative and heteronormative social practices. Anything “gay” was bad. Anything femme was “gay”.
Meanwhile, I worked overtime to suppress my feelings, to repress my queerness, to force myself to be the boy that I was expected to be. I spent more time talking down to myself, berating myself for not being like the “other guys” than I ever did growing into myself naturally. I isolated, I lied, I drank, I self-harmed, and pushed so many away in vicious, self-destructive cycles.
Overall, my memories of youth are mostly a haze. A mix of seemingly disconnected moments of feeling content, long blank spaces, and deep regrets.
So, here I am at 30 often experiencing stark emotional extremes. I am both learning to love and accept myself, and struggling to let go of the hatred I subjected myself to for so long.
I am both excited about the incredible sex that I’m having with my partner and our lovers, and lamenting lost time being sexual with my youthful body.
I am both embracing my sexual needs, desires, kinks, and fantasies… and still struggling to unpack deep seeded internalized homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, and sexual shame.
I am both completely sure of my queerness, and completely incapable of adequately defining or understanding it in any way that makes sense.
But you know what? That’s valid.
I’m 30, flirty, and crying.
This post is so familiar to me. I struggled so hard through my teen years in the 80s with no language at hand to describe myself to me let alone anyone else, much of the 90s were a mess, and I finally started coming home to myself in my mid-30s. Kids who can share their identities and experience their teens and 20s with less shame and need to hide make me so envious.
I don’t mean to make this about me. I just want you to know that someone out there gets some of this, too.
I really appreciate you sharing your experiences, Elan. It actually does mean a lot knowing someone else out there gets these sort of feels too. I think it’s totally valid for us to lament on opportunities, communities, support, and language that were never there for us, while also being happy for those who have these things now. It’s like, I’m happy for them! But also fuck them LOL.