Birthdays

I had so much fun part of today. The part where I was swimming with my friends and taking photos and playing games. The part that felt carefree and relaxed.

And still you turned away from me. I didn't wake up with you and you rolled away when I tried to snuggle. Instead, I was awake at 6am on my birthday, alone and drunk in the dark in the pool. I watched the sunrise and thought it would help me feel hopeful about the year to come. A new day, a fresh start, a new beginning. 

Instead, my new beginning felt lonely, disjointed, cold, shaky, and disappointing.

And now I'm ending the day the same way. We fought, I cried. I'm sitting here and you're sitting over there and you don't want to touch me or be near me and I get worse. Everything gets worse. 

The loneliness increases. The feeling that I'm going through this and there is no hope it's going to get better hits and I just sob and sob and sob. 

This is what my birthday is this year.

I hate it. 

I want to feel better. I want you to love me and hold me and never stop. 

I want a lot of things. I don't think I'm going to get them. 

Thoughts Answered

Often, I have tried to figure out the moment I decided I was gay, or I first knew I had a girl crush, or I knew I was attracted to girls, at least sexually because I fantasized about them while I made out with my boyfriends - going back in time to try to understand why I never knew I was gay.

And then I met someone. I stopped asking. It didn't matter anymore why I hadn't known at 13 or 15 or 17, because I met my love and that was all that mattered. Her friends accepted me in a way that I had never known before, because all they saw was my out and comfortable side. Over the past months I've settled into a beautiful serenity with myself that I've never felt before.

And then last night I had this dream. It came out of nowhere, my last thoughts of the night solely focused on British TV show Doctor Who, and somehow answered all the thoughts I'd left alone all those months ago:

We arrived in New Zealand, my lovely boi and I, and were driving to a little vacation spot, eager to see the exotic animals and the rainforest. The water was pouring down and the road was narrow, slicing a thin path between two vast bodies of water, but we were so happy just to be together.

We arrived at the camp to see a few others, a man and his girlfriend or wife, and another girl with them, mingling in the main kitchen. They greeted us and helped us with our bags. Before I knew it I had been dragged off by the separate girl, who was offering dry clothes and towels. She brought me into a bedroom where I gratefully took a towel from her to help with my hair.

And then she started pushing, asking about having sex with men and why shouldn't I just try it? She kept talking about how much she enjoyed it, how much she enjoyed the taste of men and I couldn't handle it. I wanted to find my boi. I stalked into the kitchen where my boi was wrapped in a towel at the table, and clambered to sit at the tabletop where I felt safe.

"Why are you in a towel?" I asked.

"My bag fell in the river and everything is wet," she responded and I laughed, heart relaxing.

"Sorry. I stole a shirt and underwear to sleep in. I'll get them, they're in my bag," I offered with a smile and a kiss. The lighthearted moment faded as I pulled away because the girl was in the doorway again.

"I don't understand why you won't just try it. You'll like it," she promised. I wanted to rip my hair out, I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her about the time I was almost raped in high school, or when I was molested in college, but I knew I'd only be proving her point by showing her my bad experiences.

"I have tried it," I insisted. "I have had it sweet and nice, I have had normal relationships with men, but it was never right. It was always wrong, so inherently wrong, and no matter if I gave consent to them I wasn't giving consent to myself because it was never what I wanted. It always felt like being molested, and I can't even blame anyone but myself because it was me who allowed it to happen," by now I was shaking and crying, but I could feel their eyes burning me.

"So can we drop the subject now, please?!" I slammed my fist on the table and turned into my lover's side, not wanting to hear what anyone had to say. What I felt mattered, and I had said my piece.

I was worried about my boi's reaction, but I shouldn't have been, as I felt an arm protectively curl around my back and I cried into her shoulder.

When I woke up, I realized that maybe the moment doesn't matter, maybe I don't need to know exactly when I figured it out, or why I didn't realize it earlier. All those years of discomfort still take a toll on me occasionally, still sneak up on me when I don't expect it.

When I think about girls who are coming out later, I can't help but wonder at the sneers they endure from lesbians, at what other pain they must have to face. Do they also have years of giving consent to others without giving self consent burdening their backs? Though I'm now part of the "always been gay" club when I go out, I have to remember never to pass judgement. It wasn't that long ago that I wouldn't have been accepted.

Feeling Proud

LA Pride was a big hit with me. Of course, you know that I live in a little tiny village where my neighbor churns butter and we all sing in the streets as we bake bread and open our shops, so Pride seemed huge.

I spent the day with the boifriend and a bunch of friends. There's something about being surrounded by people who are happy and excited, by people who are a part of our culture, by people who smile when I hold hands with my boi, or we dance together, or kiss. There's something about making friends with the people standing nearby, walking down the street, passing too close, ordering at the bar - something about the easy way our bodies ebb and flow and belong to everyone and no one as the good vibes keep rolling in.

The parade went on for forever and a day and I made out like a bandit with stickers and a free flag and lots of other stuff. I was fairly tipsy and warmed from the sun by the time we decided it was going to continue forever and moved into the shade of a bar. I don't drink a lot, especially in the beginning when my boi's friends made me nervous and I wanted to make a really good impression.

I felt so comfortable, so alive, so happy and free, so in love, that I felt free to drink and keep drinking, though I had water between - felt free to enjoy myself and my relationship and our friends and this beautiful community full of beautiful, glittering people all around us. I felt connected to all of them.

Of course there was some drama, I mean, we're still lesbians, but none of it was between me and my boifriend. I feel so lucky for that. Lucky that I feel like we're on the same page. Lucky that I feel so loved, lucky that we're communicating, lucky that we fit in all these little jigsaw ways, lucky that we can see an outline of something on the horizon that doesn't seem crazy, that's not a complete compromise for one of us.

I feel proud to be gay, proud to be part of this family, proud to have found friends in my boifriend's group, but the most proud to be with the one I love.

Updates/Desires

After being *ahem* heckled on twitter about my girl crushes :)  I had some startling realizations about myself, my esteem and my love life. Whichever girl I like can be awful, mean as hell, or undeserving (in another's point of view), but I'll think she's wonderful. Is that normal? Isn't that how relationships go? Aren't we all blind to faults?

I mean, I don't like being emotionally abused and I won't put up with it, but there are certain things I get railroaded into. I do end up getting into situations where I'm used physically, but I'll need a therapist to work out that one. Point is, I like when my my girl can get a little mean, because I like a good fight. I like stubbornness and strong convictions because I like confrontation and the explosive force that comes from a passionate argument. I enjoy the cathartic energy of airing grievances and finally getting everything out into the open. If we can't fight, are we really communicating?

There's a certain balance to be achieved in a relationship. Sweet and gentle vs explosive and passionate. I want both sides of this coin. I want the soft mornings and sweet words in bed, I want the hallway fights with slamming cupboards, the frequent shower interruptions to ask a question, the giggles at family parties, the frustration at public events when we want to be alone, and the nights on the couch when I am so mad but then at three in the morning I want nothing more than your arms wrapped around me.

Can I have everything? I don't know. But I want it.

Bonus- here's an excerpt of the latest chapter of my first:girl series AKA coming out story now up on wordpress: Mimosas

The guilt ate at me and the mimosas weren’t helping. I’m home. I sent her. I forgot to check my phone last night. I’m sorry I made you worry. Hope you got some sleep. It was presumptuous, thinking that she had been worried about me, but I typed it anyway, hoping.

I waited, drank another mimosa. Nothing. The tears built up again. I felt like a yo-yo, jerked around one way and then the other. How could she be so loving, so caring, and then so completely heartless? How could she see me aching to offer my soul on a platter to her and wave it away like an undercooked meal?

My housemate knocked on my door after one in the afternoon. “I heard something about you last night,” she started, but I shook my head.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” my voice was hoarse from crying.

“So it ended badly. We all knew it would, Tabby. God, can’t you see she was playing you? You can’t trust girls like that. They’re just as bad as guys, pitting girls against each other-” I shook myself out of my stupor.

“Girls like what?” I searched around for the term clumsily given to me in the heat of an argument.

“Butch girls? You’re judging her because of how she looks?” I was in full defense mode. Maybe Gwen had just broken my heart, but she was still everything to me and that meant fighting for her to the ends of the earth.

“No. Well, yes. Maybe. C’mon, Tabby. You know her, you’ve seen her. She’s playing you.”

“Are you saying that all this crap I’ve gone through with you and Charlie and all the others is because Gwen isn’t a nice, normal, Stepford-wife girl? That if she had long hair and a polite smile and drank cosmos instead of beer and whiskey, and didn’t curse, and wore high heels instead of converse, and dresses instead of mismatched plaids-” I choked, those were all things I loved about her. I loved her masculinity. I loved her rough edges, the way she held her beer. I loved the quirky smile and the crooked teeth and the no makeup and the tattoos and all those gorgeous freckles.

“That everyone would have been fine?” I finished harshly.

Crushing/Lesbissues

Crushing is hard for everybody, but I think crushing is especially hard for lesbians. I see this on Sasha's site over at CCL all the time, where girls are constantly asking for advice on how they know if another girl likes them back. Girls are damn flirty creatures. Myself included. I love to flirt. I flirt with girls, I flirt with boys, I flirt with babies and bunnies and unicorns and Albus Dumbledore. Okay? I'm a flirt.

But when it comes to crushing on someone? It's so hard. I practically clam up. My physical and mental ability to flirt dies and leaves me alone muttering something unintelligible about tamales, and I've got nothing intelligent or witty. I understand that the only way to figure out if a girl is a lesbian/interested in you is just to ask, but I'm afraid of the asking the silence that follows.

You know the one I mean - the two hours of your day that used to be filled with talking to her, that are now empty. The endless minutes, the sparks of thought and conversation that you want to share with that one person who you know will get it - but wait, it's radio silence from her end. Because those words, "I like you," "I'm attracted to you," "I'm crushing on you," "my feelings for you extend beyond a platonic friendship," all seem to spell sudden death for my friendships with girls. And rather than push for a relationship, I'd rather at least have someone to talk to.

Not that it ends that way every time. If I have a pretty clear signal I'll go for it, but most of the time I can't be the person who says it first. Because I'll be honest: I'm afraid I'm going to be left alone, pining, with an outstretched hand and an empty text message inbox, and I know I'm not the only one. So when there's two of us who feel this way about each other, who the hell plucks up the courage to make the first move, or are we just tunnel-o-love boats that pass in the night?

Note: lesbissues (lez-bee-issues) is my new favorite term. Put that right at the top with mo' homo.

Elise

I want to talk about last night's dream because it was lovely, hot, heart-wrenching, and weird. It's been a while since we've talked about dreams, so: I was living in this underground community which was divided into two factions of unrest, but not really fighting. I had been dating, and was totally in love with, this wonderful girl named Elise, and we went on a date to a place that was filled with giant gumball looking machines, but I think they were arcade games or slot machines. It was the go-to place in our community. Afterward, she took me back to meet her parents.

All throughout dinner, these huge spider things kept crawling toward my foot and were scaring me but Elise's father told me to lift my foot up and they would scuttle away, so I held my foot aloft and noticed there was a thick web attached to my shoe, but when it was held up they stayed away. I put my foot back down for a moment, and this giant (I'm talking foot-long) spider bit me.

Elise started freaking out and so did I because the spider had metal jaws and it hurt. Her dad started laughing about how I would pivot my whole world around Elise and it would be the thing that destroyed my faction. I realized he was part of the rebellion and the spider was a man-made metallic instrument, perhaps poisonous or explosive, but definitely bad. Elise started to fight, reaching for me, screaming at her father that she loved me and didn't want to spend her life apart from me. He held her back and threw me into another room.

There was an explosion. I woke up on the surface with hundreds of people around me, digging for Elise and the "lost family" that had been buried under some sort of freak accident or earthquake. I pounded on the ground, screaming for Elise, crying. Someone rubbed my back and I looked up to see Elise, smiling at me. She pulled me into a hug and I burrowed into her warmth.

"I don't want this to separate us," she told me. "I didn't know what he was going to do. I'm so sorry. I love you, I really, really love you," she pleaded, brushing away my tears. I nodded, heart in my throat, only glad she was alive. I swept her hair off her forehead and tried to memorize her face, still so worried she'd disappear.

"The machines!" someone cried in the distance. "All the buttons are loose and it's a code violation! They're going to take them all down!"

"Everyone, go! Turn them clockwise- to the right! We can fix it!" I shouted out directions. I knew Elise would be with me on this. Our reunion could come after. The machines were important to the happiness of our community, and they were special to us as well. I lost sight of her as we all ran amongst the machines, tightening, fixing. After a while the inspectors backed down. Everyone made their way back to the digging site, but I couldn't find Elise.

"We haven't brought anyone up yet," the foreman told me when I questioned him about her. "Haven't even broken through."

Had she come out through a secret tunnel? Had I been dreaming? Had anyone else seen her? 

Frantically, I began to dig.

Day 29 Love/Fear

30 Day Letter Challenge

Day 29 — The person that you want tell everything to, but are too afraid to

First post from the new computer! Can I get a cheer?

Love and fear coincide more often than you might think. I'm afraid to disappoint my friends, my colleagues, my boss, my family, my girlfriends. I like when people like me, so much that you might call it a fatal flaw. So, when people set me on a pedestal, I try very hard to stay up there instead of letting myself tumble down.

 I have so many sides to my personality, like everyone does, but most only see two or three. I suppose that by reading my blog you see more of me. You see when I get pissed and want to fight, the moments where I break down and want to cry, my huge ego and my complete insecurities, my gangster moments, and my need to fix the world. You see how I want to believe there is good in everyone, how little I guard myself against people, and yet how I constantly guard myself by not letting anyone in.

I suppose I tell everything to you, like I would a diary, considering you're almost as quiet. I don't mind the lurking readers - I know what it's like to read and connect and feel like you're not alone and someone else is going through all this crap. It's why I started a blog in the first place. It's just interesting that you all across the interwebs, who have never met me, probably know me better than my best friends. In a way, that's horribly sad, but in another way, I guess it's to be expected.

Day 20 Heartbreak

30 Day Letter Challenge

Day 20 — The one that broke your heart the hardest

Sorry, guys, you know what this is going to be. I think it's about time you got the back story on first:girl. It's going to read kind of like a story, so, this should be fun. Because isn't heartbreak always?

Okay, going back into this, years ago, you need to know who I was.

You have to understand, going back in time, that I had questioned my sexuality for years but was only just beginning to act on it.  No one had ever expected me to be anything other than very straight, and very young. While I was smart, my social sense was underdeveloped. I was a social butterfly who didn't understand the games people played, a naive girl who believed in rainbows and acceptance and "true love conquers all."  I had just gone through a very confusing year, and the start to my summer hadn't exactly gone as planned (see Awakening) when I was totally rejected the first time I asked a girl on a date.

The second half of my summer started to look up when I got hit with a bolt of lightning at work one day.   

She was absolutely everything I ever wanted but never knew I could have.

I'm posting all parts of my first:girl story over at tabbyqt.wordpress.com 
They are password protected, but just tweet me @tabbyqt or email me at tabbyqt@hotmail.com and I'll send you the password, no questions asked.

Day 5 Redux Dreams

30 Day Letter Challenge

Day 5 — Your dreams

Instead of a letter, I decided to share. This was last night's dream:

I was wandering through a small alleyway near one of the places where I work, when I stumbled upon a candle shop. There was a woman inside, a customer, dipping a wick into white and blue wax, creating a candle. I browsed the store and found a beautiful candle in a wavy design, dipped in layers to create a rainbow pattern. The tag read $30.00, much less than some of the other, duller candles. My heart started beating faster in my chest and I felt warm and radiant. I wanted to make one.

I strode toward the front counter to find the shop keeper, but there was only the woman making the blue and white candle. Suddenly, a woman with glittering, dark eyes appeared from behind a thick curtain I hadn't noticed before.

"Hello, dear. Let me guess, you want to make the rainbow candle?" I was astonished she could read me so quickly, but she brushed it off with a gleam in her eyes. "I'm a psychic as well as a candlemaker. Each candle calls to a person for a specific purpose." She was interrupted by a good looking girl with short blonde hair coming in the door. In the dream I could tell she was gay, and she radiated sadness.

"Take a seat at the table, please, each of you. In the seat to the left, you may tell the negative aspects of your story, and in the seat to the right, you may tell the positive." The other girl began to speak, but the psychic interrupted her. "Positive first, please."

Words started to pour out. I was hyped up on all the sugar in the world. I couldn't stop beaming. My heart was expanding so far and so fast that my chest couldn't possibly contain it. "I want a rainbow candle because of this girl. Last time she didn't notice me and that was alright-"

"Was it?" she questioned. I wasn't sure. I felt so wonderful. Plus, wasn't this the positive chair?

"No, I guess I was heartbroken, but I learned from it," I quickly moved on, feeling happy and sparkling again, "but if there's only ever going to be a few people in my life who make me feel this way, I want to experience it. Even if it's only for a moment, like a comet." I couldn't hold still. My veins were filled with champagne and I was bubbling, effervescent. My breathing was harsh and I could feel my face was red with exultation. "I want it to streak across my life with such bright glory that it will sear into my memory and the beauty and love and excitement of this moment will never leave me!"

The psychic beamed. "I'll help you make it for free," she told me, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

I woke up. It was so disorienting, breathing so harshly in the dream, and then waking up to a body that was taking a slow, calming inhale. It felt weird, and wrong, almost as if I were waking up to the wrong body altogether.

I'm not sure exactly what this dream means. I never saw myself switch to the negative seat, and I never heard the other girl's story, but even as I wrote this, my heart beat fiercely against my breast and my face flushed. The joy I felt in the dream lingers on. It's a gorgeous feeling. I wish I could share it with you.