Does It Really Matter Anyways?

 I'm a freshmen in college , and to be honest, the best thing about college is that you have the opportunity to for the first time, to stand on top of the mountain and look back on the crazy trail you took to get there.  All of a sudden I was in a new city around people that I don't know and that don't know me, and it felt great because for the first time in a long time, nothing that I had done before that moment really mattered.  There was no self image to perpetuate, no people that I secretly hated that I had to continue to please.  There was just me and a world that didn't know a thing about me.

Needless to say with all this freedom, a little self-rediscovering was inevitable.  Prior to college I identified as a heterosexual female.  Now I identify as a queer genderqueer of some sort.  With the freedom to do and be whatever I wanted I ended up doing just that.  I like boys.  And I like girls, and just about everyone in between.  And I want to be with them in every single since of the word, and I don't really see anything wrong with that. . . on most days.  On other days I can't stand the fact that I want to be with girls when I've only ever wanted to be with boys before.  I mean I always felt this weird tingling feeling whenever I saw a girl naked or what not, but I thought that was normal.  I never in a million years thought that made me any less straight than any other straight person.  Well I was wrong.

Then I slowly came to realize that I never really felt like a girl, and that the words female and male seemed to make no real sense to me at all.  I was sure of only two things: I wanted a flat chest, and I wouldn't mind having a penis.  Needless to say, that was not normal hetero behavior.  So I dropped the old labels, and found some new ones.  And as difficult as this journey was for me, it was the easy part.

Now I find that I am suddenly realizing that I am not the person that people (mainly people back home) thought I was.  I was always pretty butch, but everyone was somewhat "reassured" by the fact that I seemed to have a pretty strong attraction towards men.  "That's just the way she is" everyone thought and still thinks, but the fact of the matter is that it really isn't.  I'm not straight and I'm not female, so how in the world am I supposed to explain this?

At school, it's really not that hard.  Basically everyone at school kind of gets that I am anything but heterosexual.  I hang with a lot of lesbians, have ridiculously short hair, and my wardrobe floats from anywhere between heterosexual female to homosexual female to heterosexual male to homosexual male.  I dance and drink with lesbians, am a queer activist, and talk about James Franco all day long.  I think most people get the picture.  I think I only actually sat two of my friends down to tell them that I'm not straight/bisexual/queer/whatever.  And no one knows that I'm genderqueer because I honestly have no idea how to go about telling people that.

But the greatest thing about school is that none of it really matters.  I can honestly say that no one would look at me any different no matter how I identify.  But as for the people back home, I mean do they really need to know who I sleep with?  Do they really need to know that I sometimes wish I had a penis and no breasts?  They already see me as being a bit "off," so why complicate things with all sorts of terminology that they won't really understand anyways?  And why complicate the relationships with the precious few people that I really do still care about back home? And don't even get me started on my family.  I have an older cousin who just recently came out, and I mean the family took it ok, but she isn't on the best of terms with her father anymore.

I guess I have the same fear that everyone else does.  I don't want my old friends to see me different than they did before.  They are, after all, supposed to be the ones that know me best of all.  And it's a complicated matter to explain.  Yes, I did like guys, and I still like guys.  But I'm just saying that I also like girls.  I don't want them to argue with me or say that I'm just going through a phase.  And even if it is, what's wrong with that?  Why does everything have to be so definite?  Can't I just do whatever makes me happy?  I mean as long as I'm not hurting myself or others, who cares.  This would definitely come up because the whole "Are you a lesbian?" thing has come up before because of how I dress and act.  I really just don't want to do through that game of twenty-one I told you sos again.  Just a few months ago, both my parents on two separate occasions asked if I was gay because I attended the National Equality March.  I deflected a bit more or less saying that "people" didn't have to be gay to go to the march.  My dad asked if I was interested in that particular "lifestyle."  And when I said yes (mainly because the question confused me but whatever) he re-asked the question in order to elicit the "correct" answer.  How was I supposed to say "Well, I mean I don't really know. I mean I pretty much only go to gay parties and made out with a girl for like an hour while I was sober, but I still feel attracted to guys.  How would you classify that again?"

But most of all, I don't want my parents to cut me off and to say that the big city "changed" me.  The city didn't change me.  Suburbia changed me.  The city finally let me be able to change back to the way I was always supposed to be.  

I suppose I have already made up my mind about it to a certain extent though.  Before I didn't really have an answer if someone asked if I was gay or straight, but now I do.  So if someone asks, I'll tell them the truth.  But I doubt anyone will.  Like I said, the only people who really "need" to know are the people that wouldn't think to ask because they think they already know the answer.

I don't know how long I can keep this up, but I'm pretty sure not much longer because I have acquired a couple girl crushes at school, and seeing as I am getting more and more comfortable amongst the queer community, it's only a matter of time before questions start to arise or pictures show up on Facebook.  And if by the grace of God some amazing women wants to be with me as much as I want to be with her, well it would probably require some explaining as to why there are half a dozen pictures of me kissing the same girl on my profile.  Oh well. I guess my motto will still be the same: Que sera, sera.