I see you there at 13 years old, its 2am, unable to sleep because there is a secret you’re keeping that you yourself don’t truly understand. Tossing and turning, thoughts spiralling, tears falling endlessly down your face, lying there in bed asking yourself over and over…’WHAT am I?’.  In this moment, I so desperately want to hold you and tell you not to be afraid.

I see you there at 15 years old, such a repressed and uptight teen, desperately wanting to be a ‘good girl’, get good grades at school, be popular, be funny, on all the sports team and follow the ‘right path’ whilst avoiding watching films with Angelina Jolie in them because it makes you feel such desperate yearning. Perhaps the unyielding obsession with Justin Timberlake AND Britney Spears whose posters line the walls of your childhood bedroom are trying to tell you something. You think you find an answer that might explain all of this deafening uncertainty – “maybe I am bisexual, apparently thats a thing?” 

In this moment, please don’t see this as a route out, an escape hatch to bury one side of you and seek a heteronormative life that you hope will satisfy who you are and allow you to remain hidden in plain sight. You tell yourself, I can just have boyfriends and eventually a husband and children and the other bit can just fuck off and buried like a dirty little secret never to be spoken of. But you know deep down that one day…someone will come along that will unleash a side of you that truly feels like home. 

I see you there at 16 years old, retreating when the girls at school decide to practise kissing each other because you know that it’s not a joke to you or something to impress the boys. So scared of being seen because the few girls that were brave enough to express themselves were shamed or pushed out. ‘Lesbian’ was a dirty word and not something you could even begin to feel like you could wear with any kind of pride but not only that, it didn’t make total sense to who you were or what you were feeling anyway! 

I see you there, 18 years old with Mum, in the changing rooms of the local leisure centre, a seemingly very ordinary day when suddenly this secret you can no longer keep buried deep inside of you comes pouring out like an uncontrollable tidal wave. You don’t need to be afraid. Telling her through streams of tears that you have felt so confused for so long but that you might be attracted to girls AND boys, she will not reject you as you fear, a fear you have held onto for so many years for no rhyme or reason. A fear that makes no sense because this woman has only ever shown you unending love and pride. She will sit there, hold you and not think of you any differently to before. In fact she will love you even more (if thats possible) for being brave enough to express who you are in a world that hasn’t quite caught up with the notion of sexuality on a spectrum. In fact, because it will take you so long to actually say these words to her with any form of clarity through the uncontrollable sobbing, she will feel distinct relief because she thought ‘you were going to tell me you had cancer or something awful had happened to you’. Although, I am so proud of how you brave you were in that moment you don’t need to then go back into hiding and wait 4 more bloody years to tell the rest of the world who you are. 

I see you there at 22 years old (finally), one summer holiday, telling your beautiful best friends who have known you since you were 11, who you really are. Because as predicted, you knew that it would one special woman, to unlock something that was so impossible to resist, a connection that made you feel so alive and excited that you could no longer hide it from the world. She was Brazilian, cultured, an editor for Vogue and beautiful…and although this connection never goes beyond a friendship, it was enough to know that you couldn’t run away from this anymore. 

I see you there at 23 years old, (after a brief detour, a rubbish boyfriend) finally going on a date with a woman and sitting on the bus the next day on the way home from hers, messaging your friends that your life had changed forever, imploring them to do what you just did because there could not be simply anything better than this !!

I see you there at 26 years old, bringing home your first girlfriend to introduce to your family, explaining to your elderly grandparents this notion of being ‘queer’. They do their best to see this new version of you as still their little girl, their Emma, who they loved so deeply all of your life. When you feel this slight tinge of rejection because sometimes they don’t ask ‘how is your girlfriend doing’ when you come home to see them on weekends from your new life in London, understand and be sympathetic to the life they have come from. And when one day, they invite your girlfriend and you to this special lunch they make at home and Grandpa pours wine for you both from a bottle he has been saving for many many years, know that this is them saying we accept you, we love you.
I wish I could tell you, reassure you, hold you, that the thing that is making you feel so deeply uncomfortable, so full of shame and total confusion will be such an unquestionable bright light in your life that you will feel so grateful for. It won’t feel like a burden weighing you down but a privilege, a choice you would make over and over again if it given the opportunity to do so. 
Your crushes on girls, boys, friends are a beautiful thing that didn’t need a definition or a reason. 

If I could show you your future, in your 30s living a life I could never have dreamed for myself, touring the world as a musician, in a loving civil partnership with a less loving cat called Gillian Anderson and the freedom to express truly who I am, you would see its all worth it.

I would tell you proudly and defiantly that you can be queer, bi sexual, lesbian, gay, a dyke…whatever you feel. All labels you will proudly wear at different times in your adult life.