So
I kissed that person I've been talking to
You know
The one I've been mildly crushing on
On and off
For half a decade
And it felt strange
Not the kiss
The kiss was great
I mean, it felt strange to know that it was okay
That I didn't need to choose between this thing we have
And what this other thing could be
I could just relax and take things easy
As much as I am ever capable of either of those things, anyway
And drift wherever this strange new breeze might take me

You know me
I feel, at any given time, tugged in all directions at once
That is, if anything can be thus described, my defining quality
But I spent years pathologising that very thing
Listening with rapt attention when the world told me I was disgusting
Like a child listening to a bedtime story
And you know I don't think I even really mean that metaphorically
We really do make a point of teaching kids that there is precisely one person to be
One way to live
Straight
Cis
Overworked
And monogamous
Anything else is in some way less
And so I learned, as a lot of people like me did, that it was better to hide and lie and pretend
Than to express ourselves honestly
This approach was actively encouraged, for fucks sake
As if those habits ever once produced a single happy or healthy individual in the history of our species
It's like trying to shut off a garden hose by clamping your thumb over the end
It seems to work for about half a second
And then what had been a steady stream becomes a dozen water-jets shooting everywhere
You can't control it
And you get super fucking wet
And that metaphor got away from me a bit

What I'm trying to say is
By not accepting who I am and what I want
By crushing and condensing my identity til it explodes all over everybody's everything
I hurt people
And then I kept doing it
Over and over again
Until I learned that raging against the parts of me I find hard to love
Doesn't actually erase them
It doesn't actually fix anything
It just makes me ill
And unfulfilled
And you know what's truly terrible
Is that some people go their whole lives thinking that's an okay way to feel
They wake up every morning and voluntarily erase themselves
Dream by dream and wish by wish
Until they're barely even people anymore
They're just piles of bone and hair and flesh
Red meat going bad
And I dunno
Maybe it's just me man
But that sounds worse than any awkward, honest conversation
I have ever had

The thing is, once you pop you can't stop
And now I'm eyeing an uncomfortable question
What other parts of me have I been neglecting
What other scary, strange things are under here
Because if it's possible to love more than one person
Maybe I can love more than one aspect of me

Anyway
I don't need a reply to this urgently
I just wanted to say
I kissed someone today
And I think it changed everything