The other night I left a concert because I needed space. I was sitting there in the audience, the first song was playing, and I felt so sad. I walked outside to get some air and I sat on the pavement next to the parking lot and I watched the sky get a little darker. I hugged my knees to my chest and I searched for what was wrong and I cried a little. I needed to leave.

I left.

I was walking across a darkened campus, shivering and feeling awful, when a thought emerged: I am so lonely. In that moment I felt so alone. Walking away from a concert filled with people, walking away carrying a hurt that seemed to defy sense but hurt nonetheless. It felt like I could never be understood, a sort of loneliness at its essence. I felt burdensome and loathsome and pariah-esque, and in that moment I considered walking to my car and smoking the rest of a pack of cigarettes I had earlier bought and fumingly smoked. I thought about getting in the car and driving away.

I felt like an embarrassment, some sort of twisted puzzle without a solution, a freakish girl who seems to refuse happiness, who subjects those she loves to the ridiculousness of her willful neuroses. I wanted to put myself in a long time out, and then I wanted to be chased after, to be reassured. I wanted to be told that my hurts were seen, that I was loved even with my hurts and my bruises and my sillinesses. I felt scared and prone to false dichotomy as images of angelic Boy and harpy Girl drifted by, carrying with them a particularly sharp suggestion that I didn't deserve the angel Boy with all my horridness. I should find a rock and disappear. If I kept quiet maybe I would slowly turn into sludge and enjoy the blissful ineptitude of thought enjoyed by slime the world over.

I hated these thoughts. They're the worst bits of myself, compounded and minced into a black chasm of grossness. I banished the worst of the thoughts, tried to put the rest of the terrible things on hold for a moment and headed to the room. Still, the thought of how lonely I felt hovered, almost luminous but for its weight. I could barely understand myself and I knew it was asking for a boon of a miracle, but I needed to be understood. I needed the me I was struggling with to be seen. I felt alone because I was hurting and I felt like I had to be convincing that the reason I was hurting was a valid reason, and if I couldn’t explain it well enough it would never be seen- I’d just be some crazy girl who makes everything harder than it has to be. Who cries over stupid little comments. Who so desperately wants to be peaceful and fun-loving and is terrified that all my little wounds will never be done wreaking havoc.

I had to be understood. I’m a skilled enough writer. . . why couldn’t I just sit down and explain it? The biggest and scariest question whittled itself down to “why is this such a big deal?” and I thought that if I could just explain it. . . If I could only show what I meant. . .

I can’t help that I hurt. I just do. I’m doing my best to take care of that hurt- to be open about it and learn more about what’s going on and not get lost in a sea of pain or hopelessness. I am already drafting contingency plans and small and large courses of action to change what about my life is making me unhappy. I’m trying to take care of my hurt, but I can’t control the fact that I hurt. I can’t control which circumstances set off this hurt, be they silly or socially valid. But I hurt.

When I got to the room I was firmly resolved to sit down and write the long sordid history of emily’s sexual orientation. I thought I’d just tell the story- how long it took to discover who I am, how many back and forths there have been, how many times I’ve been told that I was being ridiculous, how many times I’ve had to come out, how often being accepted by others has been contingent on so many things, how I subsisted for years on a sparse diet of external acceptance, how my orientation affected and affects that acceptance. . . It’s never been clear for me. It’s been a big struggle. A formative struggle.

I sat at my computer and wrote a few lame sentences. And by lame I really mean without the ability to move. I deleted them and began again, and the immensity of such a project overwhelmed me. The importance and the literal hugeness was too much in that moment.

I noticed my friend, K, online and I started chatting with her. Like me, K is a Queer lady in a straight relationship, but hers is a few years old. She’s out and a feminist and she was so empathetic. She struggles with the same thing that I’ve been bothered by, which though I haven’t been explicit yet, centers on making sense of myself as a non-straight woman in a monogamous heterosexual relationship.

One might ask why it’s such a big deal, to which I have no quick answer. Being out and Queer has been such a part of my life for the last 5 years, not to mention the prior closeted 3. Only one year ago I was fresh out of the first successful relationship I ever had, and it was with a woman. I moved across the country, leaving my beloved Bay Area for the decidedly less-Queer New York. I was sure that I had learned the biggest pieces of my orientation identity in the previous few months. I was sure (yet again) that I knew what I liked and would always like: women. I theoretically proposed that I might find some very rare male-bodied person who I would not dismiss if otherwise appealing, but I tended to say that with a strong sense of skepticism.

Then I was in Michigan, falling for a male, and the world turned around. But I was still Queer. A Dyke is allowed to fall for a man once in a while, especially if she still prefers women.

Then I was in New York, over-worked, typically under-slept, ill, detached, alone. I was too busy to find a new queer community. Too tired to do all the work involved, which is not to say that I made no effort, as I absolutely went on dates and tried to meet new people, but rather that it is terribly difficult work to nurture a new community. It takes consistency and attention and energy, which were running low after my summer and fall. Then came the winter and the whispers of spring.

Then I met the Boy.

Somehow I’ve settled into a magical arrangement: I love him, he loves me, and we laugh a lot. Simple, no?

What happens to your identity as a queer woman when you begin to contemplate a life-long heterosexual relationship? How do you define yourself? When you meet other queer people and you are standing next to your partner, how do you introduce yourself without bluntly inserting somewhere into the introduction, “Hello, I’m m and though I’m deeply in love with my boyfriend I’m not straight,”? What do you do when you suddenly discover that it’s Pride Sunday and you don’t even have a clue what kinds of festivities are going on in New York, nor do you have anyone to ask??? Or when yet again a lovely gay man assumes that you’re just another straight chick?

What happens, if you are me, is that you become filled with an overwhelming sadness. You begin to grieve for the part of you that you’ve lost, that you’ve let go missing. A part you fear may have disappeared forever. You begin to wonder what you can do to gain back those pieces, and ultimately, you realize that it’s very difficult to explain to non-Queers why it means so much to be Queer.

Being Queer is not like having been raised Catholic. It’s not like having been a Girl Scout. It’s neither a random bit of my history nor is it a part of my detached cultural background. Coming out as Queer- or rather, as Bisexual, then Lesbian, then Queer, was one of the first big ways that I gained self-acceptance. Furthermore, when I joined the Queer community, like it or not, I joined a dynamic that very much felt like Us vs. Them. You’re either family or you’re not. There are aspects of coming out as GLBTQ, of growing up, of discovering and searching, that cannot be explained the way they can be empathized. When I meet someone and I find out ze is Queer, I immediately feel a little closer to hir, even if we’re as different as can be in almost every other way. It’s a bond.

I know that I haven’t caught my thoughts about this yet. They’re still amorphous and drifting, and maybe they will never settle. Maybe that’s ok. I’m left with a directive from within to go out and forge a new community. I must discover again where I fit and how to go about in the world as a person with an irregular orientation identity.