In the lottery of life, I’ve been fortunate to live under a roof with some of the most supportive and well-rounded women I’ve ever encountered. I grew up under a matriarch, with my mother being our family’s sole provider. There was never a moment where I could even see myself as anything but a feminist. It’s what I had been notoriously known for, an aggressive supporter of women’s rights, even in the face of male discomfort.
But in my mother’s professional success, I had been left to fend for myself around my brother and father. It would be my father who I’d see first thing in the morning as I get ready for school and the first face I see the moment I step home. Though my brother existed in bursts of moments in my childhood, too busy making sense of his own youth, I’d still see him ride the front seat every morning.
I was then left with a mother I’d only see in her most tired form at night. And though I still had my weekends with her and would never blame her for such a thing, I had subconsciously made myself small in her life so she could thrive in keeping us afloat. My relationships with men were always easy because they were always effortlessly present. With my relationships with women, I had always been in a battle of hoping I wasn’t too much and wishing I was just enough.
While I call myself a girl’s girl now, a woman who truly supports other women, I had spent so much of my life struggling with my definition of womanhood and female solidarity. By ruminating on Tumblr, I had thought I felt feelings deeper than my fellow peers, and that I was simply “not like the other girls.” In my liking for indie music and novels, I developed a misconstrued sense of maturity; one that others, in my opinion, did not possess. With this mentality, I comfortably situated myself on a high horse and forced my friends to deal with my belittling remarks about childish first crushes, thinking that even talking about a boy meant adhering to the patriarchy.
Looking back, I realized that wasn’t maturity. It was more like a daughter staring at her reflection, playing dress up in her mother’s clothes: too young to realize her shoes were three sizes too big and too self-absorbed to see anything outside her own field of view. Unbeknownst to me, I just happened to be a burgeoning lesbian with complicated feelings about femininity. This makes it all but more confusing when the connotations of a pick-me girl are often associated with pandering toward the male gaze. While the politics of the lesbian identity is far removed from male validation, I once believed I couldn’t be a part of feminine spaces. I necessitated acceptance from boys for my typically masculine presentation — but even then, it was unfair to perceive my sadness and struggle through a different measure than others just because I let my own internalized misogyny dictate my worldview.
Even though I was surrounded by the most understanding people I could’ve asked for, my own internalized homophobia manifested into decisions that forced me to distance myself from a support group.
Although I owe so much of my development to my female friendships during my formative years, I had always felt like an arm’s length away from them. Even though I was surrounded by the most understanding people I could’ve asked for, my own internalized homophobia manifested into decisions that forced me to distance myself from a support group. I did everything I could so I wouldn’t fall into the predatory lesbian trope, despite my friends dismissing my concerns as overdramatic and assuring me that they felt at ease around me, just as they would with anyone else.
I insisted on taking up the least amount of space possible, as it felt like I was indebted to them simply because they accepted me. In turn, I felt like I was playing a part I created for myself; a prisoner of some sort where I had been my own jailer who had thrown away the keys. Perhaps I was just doomed to experience my girlhood in isolation.
After high school, I found myself halfway across the world from Thailand, with a new name and the audacity to move into a house with a bunch of strangers in a desperate attempt to find off-campus university housing during a pandemic. For them, my queerness had existed as my blank slate and I wasn’t burdened with a previous identity I could hold against myself. The physical proximity I had with them forced me to be true. There was no mask to be had nor did I have much leverage to push them away. At least, in this case, I’ve grown enough to feel as if I didn’t have to. I let it be easy with them. I let myself be consumed by the platonic love that I had, at one point, didn’t feel existed.
The kitchen was too small to contain our voices and TikTok adlibs — it bled through walls and penetrated its way into the living room and the first-floor bedrooms. What was once a small lifeless student house was now filled with giggling women who brought it back to life.
Several months into living with my university roommates, I remember sitting comfortably in our kitchen, watching a disaster unfold: Having five girls cook in a tiny space felt like watching a tornado comparable to the March sisters. The kitchen was too small to contain our voices and TikTok adlibs — it bled through walls and penetrated its way into the living room and the first-floor bedrooms. What was once a small lifeless student house was now filled with giggling women who brought it back to life. And though, at that moment, I sat there watching everything unfold doing very little to contribute to debates about salmonella, it hit me that I loved these girls. For the first time in my life, I had let platonic love course through my veins and it injected itself into the tissues that once protected my beating heart.
It was the type of love and state of happiness that makes you feel sad when you’re damned with the knowledge of fleeting moments. I sat there and remembered thinking that I could’ve loved my friends from a different life the same way if I had just let myself feel. In that moment I knew, I was okay to burden them with myself, my snarky remarks, and my obscure attention to detail. All the while, I’d do the same for them. I let myself be engulfed by the members of this household, in a way that would curse me with grief that would take several lifetimes to get over.
In the process of learning how to be a girl’s girl on cheap laminated flooring, I learned that love is a hostile practice. Every day we choose to invade each other’s senses, steal speech patterns and stories, only to parade them to others as if a trophy won from battle. In love’s hostility, we sit in our living room in disgruntled silence and half-heartedly study until someone explains their run-in with failed marriages and familial quarrels. In our hostility, we ask each other about our days and bicker a little more when we’re hungry and exhausted. In our hostility, we force our niche interests upon each other and wear pink to movies for the fun of it. And if this is what love is, what platonic love is, then I can live till the end of my days without the fairytale of romance.
So, let this be a love letter to the women around me, past and present. To those who were patient when I didn’t know how to explain my feelings outside of pretty metaphors and published personal essays. To the women who gave me space when I needed it and took no offense when I felt suffocated by their presence. To the women who supported me and reassured me after each catastrophizing thought, who let me make my bad decisions for a good story to tell. And to the women who taught me what it meant to really, truly, love women.