A Hopeful Message About Queer Abandonment

When I was a kid, I used to spend a lot of my spare time doing kick ups in the garden. Literal hours of my day just kicking that ball up and down because I was creating a different world in my head as if I were not me, as if I could be anyone else. I always remember one day when I was crying and my mum came outside. She asked if I was crying, I said no it’s just the rain, but my chest and my heart were aching listening to the song “Hey Little Girl” by Sophie Marie. I was thinking about how love can be conditional and I wished that I could be someone else. These scenarios became an escape, a way of living as someone I wish I were born as, with a personality I wish mine could have been like. In that moment of listening to that song, it hit me how I wasn’t someone else. I was me, and this is my life and not everyone will accept that person. It almost felt like who I was supposed to be was taken from me and I still have that thought sometimes, no matter how hard I try not to. I could have been born a man and whilst I would have still been queer, it would have been different. I would have been able to express that queerness in a different way. Maybe I’d feel a little bit less like a freak. Maybe if I were cis I would have more credit with people, with my family, and I wouldn’t have to prove myself in a way that I feel like I have to now. I wouldn’t be the freak. I would have been able to go to gay bars and kiss anyone I’d like and I would have been able to go cruising with no thought in the world. How different would I have been as a kid? I was so timid and scared about who I was, how I dressed, how I spoke and how I looked. I always thought about how that life could have been mine, but the best thing you can do is accept that this ideal is not your life and you can can still do all those other things. They may be different but they’re not wrong. I can still go to gay bars and make out with randos and cruise to my heart’s desire, even if it is different, there is a community for that. If I was born differently, I wouldn’t have had the community I do have now.

Going back to the song, I always remember it chocking me up when I was 11/12 ish as it wasn’t long after I first accepted who I was. Being young, I was told I didn’t know who I was and that I’m just a “tomboy” and that was something that always stuck with me, which then affected how I saw other people’s actions. Every small thing that was said I took in a personal way. If someone said “why would you want to wear that” to boy clothes or every time I was persuaded out of short hair, I took this as a shot to my identity. It wasn’t intended that way. I doubt my parents even remember the letter I gave them when I came out, but it was all I could focus on.

As queer people we come to accept that who we are is a deal breaker for some people. Familial abandonment is common. The song repeats the line that “when you grow up you will feel abandoned” but surprisingly that didn’t happen to me. Through everything that happened to me as a kid, through the abandonment I did feel when I was younger, well, that no longer exists. It’s not a part of my life. I do not feel that way. I have done all the things that as a teenager who was deep into queer culture I thought I would never get to experience and I have it all now as an adult. It is a little different from those fake scenarios and ideals I set but I have done it. I have been to gay bars and I am more than capable of doing all the things others can do. I have also found places in queer and trans communities that I might not have had if I was born differently. I have not missed out, all I might have done is try a little harder as I’ve had to realised I’ve got to put myself out there; I have got to go to that event; I have got to go meet these people; I have got to go out and do things as no one is going to do it for me.

One thing I try to do is remember is that it is not easy for cis people. People will still face hardships, even cis straight people will have relationship issues and they’ll also have these setbacks. I know queer issues differ from someone’s bad day and I try not to invalidate my own issues, but I also think its good to remember we’re all a little stuck in life and if you weigh them up, the queer joy I feel vastly makes up for any way I feel down on myself, and any way people treat me. The joy I feel being around people like me, that understand me is what really makes me get up and get out. It is what stops me from going straight home from work and watching hours upon hours of tv as I can’t when I’ve got to go to this queer brunch or this trans-led fight club. It keeps me alive.

The abandonment that the song expresses is not something I have outside of the community like with my family either. Me and my parents still may not have the same views and there may be things they don’t understand but I feel that same way and it never stops the love that I have and it doesn’t stop theirs either. This is something they have proved to me time and time again. My feelings when I was young were valid, I did feel that abandonment because in some ways I was. Now I empathise with my parents coming from a village with virtually no queer people, with no queerness around them, that the idea of a queer kid must have been terrifying. They didn’t know what to do. As an adult they are growing with me almost, as I’m learning what queerness means to me, they’re learning too. My dad has been to queer bars in Leeds and my mum gets excited for pride and drag brunches. They love the people, they have so much care and love towards queer people and I love being around them. I love being around my family. They have shown me what unconditional love is even if it has taken a few years for that to really dig into me. That feeling of abandonment when I was younger didn’t last forever. The song saying “when you grow older you’ll feel abandoned” doesn’t apply to me and as you get older it probably won’t apply to you either. I played that song to death as a teenager and it never happened. I have family, I have community. It doesn’t all end as a teenager. It carries on and becomes so much more than you could ever believe. There’s always tomorrow and that’s not something I could think of as a kid, it’s not something I wanted to think about as a kid. I would have missed so many people, laughs and even tears. The bad and the good would have been missed but I am here and I get to be a queer adult which is an amazing thing to be.

I still doubt myself. A couple months back I went on holiday with my family and I really did enjoy myself but there were moments of worry that I had not felt in a while. I remember as a kid how jealous I was of my cousins and my brother. I looked at them as something I could never have. As they were being themselves, all I could wonder as a kid is why couldn’t I be myself too. Like I said as I got older I never felt that. I felt happier in my queerness than I would have felt fitting in. However, this holiday I felt all that jealousy again. All the boys taking off their shirts and jumping in the sea and having that boisterous relationship with each other. All I thought is that I can’t have that. I also felt it the other way. I looked at my cousin and the girlfriends on the trip and just thought it would be so much easier if I could be just be like them: if I was femme and had my long hair. I could still be boisterous but I’d fit in with who I am expected to be. I just wished to be normal. Those were all thoughts I’d really not had in a while. It was a feeling I didn’t think I could describe to my parents. I didn’t want them asking why I felt this way when I barely understand it myself, but they could tell I felt down. When my mum asked me about it, I explained it the best I could. I explained how much of a freak I felt, how much I felt like I didn’t fit in with them. It was like I was a kid again trying to explain that I felt this way and it was like she was her again, not understanding but trying. She was there for me and was amazing. She not only understood I felt this way but also accepted it and tried to help me. The moment showed how we’d both grown as I was willing to explain how I felt without the fear of questions she might have and she accepted that I felt that way and she did everything she could to help me.

Being queer can be hard and sometimes I think I will never shake that word “freak” when it comes to myself but I feel it less and less. It’s only once in a while and that might last forever but that’s okay with me. I don’t mind if I feel it because everything else I feel from being me is way better than not having that feeling and not being myself. The great thing about queerness is the reclaiming of these once horrible meanings and as I get older I realise how much more fun being a freak is. I am not held down by expectations or by what people expect of me, I’m just me.

That song doesn’t make me choke up anymore, it doesn’t make me cry because I know it’s no longer my song. That abandonment is not in me. I have people around me. If you feel that abandonment maybe you should give it a minute, or maybe 10 years but its better than not feeling at all. You just have to try and that will feel unfair. I still feel the unfairness that others can fit in without the work and that they don’t have to try be themselves, they just are, but, comparisons kill and you can’t keep making them. It is not going to change anything but you can. You have to accept that even if it is unfair you have to pick yourself up by your bootstraps a little. You have got to get out there and you have got to stop that feeling of abandonment. There are circumstances that will make it harder for you, but you need to find people online or in person to be around. Being each other’s people is an integral part of the queer community and that’s why I started Studio Andros in the first place.

I stared a blog to let my writing get out there because I enjoy it and think others might enjoy it too. The zine I am currently making but yet to be released is going to be a way for me to reach out through the community input section. I have already had responses and some of the things that have been said have really got to me. I remember reading them on the train and nearly crying. If I think I should hear them, then I think others should too. There’s also going to be some instructions with the first issue like having a little t tape follow along as I know how much of a bitch it can be when learning how to apply and other things people think would benefits queers knowing. They’ll also be events going on around Sheffield, Leeds and Doncaster that I will share of others as well as my own, so people can go to these things no matter who you are and what you do, you’ll get to experience the togetherness that I think makes us so good as a community. I think it would be good for me and others to have this website to just say whatever we want to say; say what we need to say; say stuff we don’t even mean but feel like saying in the moment, that’s okay. Any ideas, I’ll take them; anyone need any help, I’ll help; anyone need someone to talk to, I’ll talk. I’m clearly great at talking considering this whole blog is direct from a 40 minute rant I had on the walk from work.

I wrote on the website that everything on here is created by me but it is for everyone. My goal is to reach out to as many queer people as I can so maybe none of us have to feel that abandonment again. This may have been a bit of a word vomit but it’s real and it’s queer and it’s ours.