the first person you love after coming out will stick with you forever.

And that is true, whether they are queer or not. If you come out as bisexual, like I did, the first person you will date after coming out may not be queer. Maybe it'll be another straight guy named Josh. Maybe your first "out" relationship experience will be a straight-passing one, teaching you all the necessary vocabulary and insecurities of struggling to validate your queerness in a partnership that erases it to the public. Especially at a time when you're finally ready to scream your identity from the rooftops. Especially when all you want is to belong to that community you've yearned for, for 26 years.

Yet, Josh will be the first relationship you're in that is, in fact, a queer relationship to your knowledge. We could argue that all your relationships have been queer since you always were - and it's true - but this is the first one you'll own.

Josh will be the first to really know you. That part of you.

Josh will be the first whose hand you hold at pride while joyfully waving rainbow merch.

Josh will be the first to listen as you talk about queerness, belonging, and coming out before slipping his fingers into you, giving you a whole new definition of intimacy.

Josh will be so easy to fall in love with, like a tsunami that'll wipe you clean. It'll make all the past boyfriends feel like a distant memory, lived by a version of you no longer alive. You'll love Josh madly, whether he does too or not. You'll think that nothing can ever beat this because the thrill you're experiencing is so much greater, so much grander than anything that has come before.

Everything past will feel like a speck of dust. But maybe, just maybe, you won’t be able to see that you’re just on a tumbleweed. And planets still await your visit.

And maybe Josh will be your everlasting love. I hope for you that it is. But maybe it won’t. Maybe you’ll go from ‘my boyfriend Josh’ to ‘my good friend Josh’, or, worst-case scenario, ‘that asshole Josh’.

It’s a lot of maybes, I know.

This breakup will crunch your heart in a new way. Because you thought you’d arrived, right? You’d reinvented your life, you’d told everyone to readjust what they pictured you as, you finally knew yourself, owned yourself. And your partner really saw the real you.

And it ended.

That, plainly said, sucks. Not only sucks, it sticks. With you. Forever.

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-breathe-

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I wish I had a better, happier ending for this. I will never say ‘don’t do it’ or ‘be careful’. It’s so beautiful and so bright to love madly, without caution. To put your entire heart on the line and be loved for it. Do it! Do it more! Do it again!

So I’ll leave you with this: if you’re going through it or have been through it, I hear you. I’m sending you love. I know the pain can feel infinite sometimes. But trust me, there’s beauty pouring out of your broken heart. We’ll look for it together.

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