Getting My Queer Validation

What does getting that validation as a queer person look like and feel like?

There are many foggy memories of childhood and my queerness. However, high school was where my queer journey felt like it started. At the beginning of high school, I considered myself an advocate. I believed in people loving whoever they wanted and shouldn’t be discriminated against for it. It was like that for a while and I never really thought about it. I had multiple boyfriends during this time and I did what I thought one did in high school. However, it brought me no joy and so I decided to stay single. The following year, I would enter 9th grade. Sure, 9th grade was a serious time it’s where you start preparing for your CXC exams but that year changed more than my career path. I moved many seats that year as my teachers tried to find a suitable position to arrange the class. My final seating arrangement for the year was beside, let’s call her Ali for privacy reasons. Ali was smart, raised her hand in class and even found time to do sports, she was what I wanted to be. She also was confident, the type of confident you roll your eye at but she made it work, in a way to me it was flirtatious. I would quickly realise that the line between I want to be her and wanting to just be around her, blurred. We were getting close, we studied together, we talked together most time and it only made sense for me to event her over to my house. By the time she was at my house, I already knew that I wasn’t the ally I was pretending to be. My heart would flutter when she touched me, at night we cuddled in my bed and when my parent was out it felt like I was 6 again, playing house with my two barbies. Sadly, this would come to an end. We never stated we liked each other nor did we even date. This experience made me question everything I knew before. I liked her, there was no question about it. Additionally, for the first time, I felt what all the girlies had been talking about in romance movies. After that incident with Ali, a lot changed for me about what love and gender look like in the coming years. I was lucky enough to have a small group of friends who were supportive of me when they eventually found out I liked women; some of us even came out to each other. However, given the country’s norm is heterosexual, I find myself having to repeatedly come out to anyone new. As a result, some of my newer friends found out a bit later in our friendship that I am not straight. So many questioned me and explained how easier it was when the world was more cis-heteronormative. However, I found myself crying at midnight when one of my newer friends called me a “melanated queer queen.” This was so validating to me.

When I started liking Ali, it took me a long time to accept that I liked girls. It was scary each time I came out and there was a while when I thought I would never be where I am now and it would only be a dream. Also, I only started using queer after an intense sexual identity crisis during the pandemic. The word queer was just so right for me. It was so heartwarming to be seen as the person you know you are. It was validating for me as someone who knows my friend is so far removed from anything LGBTQIA+ related. It showed me I was moving in the right direction with my queer journey. I have a lot more ways to go in my journey but these small but amazing moments mean so much to me.

Is your story close to mine? How do you feel as a queer person and do your friends and family accept you?