This written entry into Expression 2016, “Dear 12 Year Old Me,” was entered by Abby Robertson
Dear 12 year old me,
That time you kissed your friend at her birthday party: it’s nothing to feel shame over. Even if it was a bit impulsive and unexpected, it wasn’t wrong.
About all of those crushes and obsessions you have been having with girls lately: they’re more than “friendships”. That’s entirely okay!
That older girl from camp that you email and ring incessantly? She’s kind, she’s funny, she’s cute, and she’s also 100% heterosexual. Whatever you’re looking for: it’s not going to happen. Spoiler alert: she gets married…to a dude.
Next year, when you start high school, and all your friends start obsessing about “hot boys” and want to go dating: you’re really not going to be interested. Don’t worry about it. You’ll realise why sooner or later.
When you take that boy to your year 12 ball, and everyone thinks maybe you’ll finally get a boyfriend, it is entirely a false alarm. You’re teasing them, girl!
When that other boy asks you out in year 13 and you know you have to turn him down, absolutely devastating him, that’s kind of when you realise that maybe you should say something.
So you do.
And it’s extraordinary.
Later, we look back on our coming out story as the craziest whirlwind of months leading up to the end of our high school career. It’s emotional, it’s silly, it’s funny and it’s scary. Lucky for us, we have the best support system ever: parents that love and accept us, friends that - quite frankly, weren’t all that surprised, teachers that absolutely know how this feels, and people to talk to when we need to.
We’re never going to forget pouring our heart out onto a crappy piece of refill paper, and leaving it on our parents’ bed, after countless failed attempts to confess to them aloud. We’re never going to forget walking nervously into school, knocking on the music room door, and finally - albeit timidly - telling someone out loud that we’re gay. We’re never going to forget organising a bunch of our friends to meet us in the practice room at lunchtime, and proceeding to talk and cry and laugh for the next two hours, generously utilising our study periods for their true purpose. Unquestionably, we’re never ever going to forget singing at the Michael Fowler Centre for our final school prizegiving with two of our friends to an arrangement of What a Wonderful World and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The former song’s lyrics just ooze gayness, especially the line “I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do; but they’re really saying I love you.” The latter? Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I mean, come on.
Oh, and way up high, the land that Dorothy heard of? You know, once in a lullaby. We live there now.
“This piece is an open letter to little lesbian me, in which I reflect on the realisation of my sexual orientation.”