I want to express the feelings that flutter within. The ones that say, ‘I am willing to sacrifice everything, for the chance to be with you’. The ones that say, ‘Your hugs shield me from the world and its judgement. From the stabs between my parents, from expectations to achieve more, from the insecurities and doubts I fester in.’ The ones that try to deny how my trail of thoughts runs into you often. And how your presence feels more like lifeblood, than simple mateship.

I want to be next to you, even if we don’t say anything. Like Peter Pan finding Neverland, some lost voyage, now ending.

At times, I feel I know everything, but the truth is I don’t know anything: hearing the leftovers of arguments, observing behaviour and connecting remaining dots. My parents, ‘Don’t want it to be about us’. So, I keep them blind to my knowledge or interrogative mind. Maybe it’s my way of consoling them, so I’m careful not to break the illusion. Or maybe I am just too afraid to ask, even though the unknown is gnawing me away.

“Everyone has gay thoughts,” he continues, fierier. I am barely breathing. “It doesn’t make you automatically gay!” He makes a direct path to the other side of the room towards the teacher’s desk. “The sin occurs if you act on it!” He slams his fist onto the desk. I jump at the sudden sound. “It’s a choice.” Guilt flushes over me. I wish I was a ghost, invisible, hoping no one will look at me….
“You grow out of it!” he yells, breaking the silence. “Men can’t love men. God made man and woman. Only they can reproduce. Only they can be together. Only they can love.”

Sitting on my bed, the covers tucked tightly around my legs, I bury my head into my hands. I feel crazy. I was told boys can’t love boys but in the stories of love I have read, my ache seems parallel.

Repeatedly, I experience this; the slide, the haunted merry-go-round I can’t get off. The deeper I slide, the more I rationalise I can’t express any emotion to others as I’m not entitled to it. I am only allowed to feel pain in life’s tragic events, such as a death or family illness. What I am going through is weak, and inconsequential. I don’t deserve to seek professional help. The people I saw in Africa have so much less than I and are happy. I am privileged and have plenty of things. I should be happy.

I want a wife, and my picket white fence.
Why are my insides tearing this dream apart?

As the weeks roll on, I notice time isn’t healing me, rather forcing my thoughts to run wild. I feel isolated in between two worlds: a straight world and a gay world. They both seem incredibly different. Incompatible. Is bisexuality the best of both worlds or the left-over scraps of each?

This is something I wish younger me knew and something I think is a failing of our schooling system, as Justice Michael Kirby iterated, nature and evolution is a force far beyond anything a species can control and is ruthlessly efficient in minimising waste and inefficiency. Couple this with gay being a natural occurrence across animals from bison to penguins creates a compelling argument that gay is needed and has a purpose in the human species.
LGBTQ+ people have not been eliminated through evolution. We have been embraced and we remain ever present within the genetic pool. It is a gift that allows you to see new perspectives, smash stereotypes and the world needs you.