Natalie Weiss

how we become who we are

I am gay because I am gay.

This is my experience.

If you’ve journeyed through this whole story with me, I think that you will see it too. You’ll see the 12-year-old kid who didn’t want to feel this way. You’ll see the 21-year-old girl who realized it for herself – it wasn’t going to change, and she wasn’t at fault. You’ll see the 27-year-old woman who is finally willing to put it all out there, for better or for worse, and tell a story ripe with pain, discovery, and resolution.

Even within the past year, as I navigated the end of a relationship and paused and then explored what dating might look like for me through dating apps, there were moments where I lamented. I don’t want to be gay. I wish I wasn’t gay.

I am not ashamed of being gay, no. But it doesn’t mean it is easy. It doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes lament the fact that if I were straight, so many things would be different for me. Easier. I’m not, of course, trying to submit that straight people have easy lives. Everyone battles something. Everyone fights a battle most people cannot see. But my life might be easier if I were straight.

And so, the question I often ask myself is this: how can I respond? What can I do?

I can’t change my past. I can’t change the environment nor the society into which I was born.

But – incredibly – in this place I live, in the United States of America, I can speak. I can speak up. I can speak out.

And I do this through my writing.

In my opinion, one of the major things that can help boost the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth is representation in media. Growing up, I didn’t see myself anywhere. And if there was a “tomboy” portrayed on screen, it was like the writers went to extra lengths to ensure that the viewers all knew the tomboy was actually a pretty, feminine girl at heart – and a very straight girl. What this does is it reiterates the narrative that queer people are somehow weird or other or not human. That being queer is somehow wrong.

Now, I realize a gaping hole in my argument – my argument being that if there was more representation of queer people in media while I was growing up, that I would have been able to accept myself sooner and may have escaped some of the mental anguish I experienced. The gaping hole is my parents. Because if a queer kid was on Disney Channel, or Nickelodeon, or in a new movie geared towards kids, I would have never been allowed to watch it. The process of accepting myself – of coming out to myself without any of the negativity or urge to change – was slow, and I am not sure there would’ve been anything that could’ve sped it up.

Except.

Except novels. I honestly believe that if there was a book about a queer girl, a girl who was strong in her faith and sought to reconcile those two things – sexuality and faith – and somehow it found its way into my hands when I was 16, things could’ve been different. Maybe they wouldn’t have been. Maybe I would’ve scoffed. Maybe I would’ve burned the book the way, nine years later, my girlfriend and I would joke about burning the homophobic book.

But maybe I would’ve read it.

The thing, in my experience, that is different about books is they are more private. The words don’t show up on a movie screen. They aren’t flashed across the family TV in the living room. Sure, there is still risk to carrying around a book with queer characters. But overall, reading is very private. Which makes it more accessible to questioning youth with unsupportive families.

And so, I aim to put a book in that gaping hole. My goal in these essays, and my goal with the novel I am writing, is not necessarily to change minds. I mean, if I could snap my fingers and make homophobia disappear, I would. But life just doesn’t honor wishes.

No, my goal is to provide queer youth with representation. It is to provide queer youth with a story about coming out or staying in, and why it matters. It is to provide queer youth a voice of experience at the same time as a voice of innocence. A voice that addresses the here and now questions of how and why and if, but also cuts through those questions to utter the truest thing: you matter. No matter what. Your story matters. Your life matters. You matter.

Beyond the book I am working on, that hopefully one day will be a physical thing you and I can hold in our hands, I want to acknowledge other authors and creators out there providing LGBTQ+ representation and community. First off, just prior to starting this blog series, I was engrossed by two things: the video game The Last of Us Part II, and Hank Green’s duology consisting of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor.

The Last of Us Part II (and actually Part I) covers those first four letters: lesbian, gay, bi, and trans. There are coming out stories interwoven with the main narrative, and I really appreciated video game developer Naughty Dog’s ability to balance those two things.

Hank Green’s novels include THREE QUEER FEMALE LEADS (!!!). So that was really amazing.

Other things I have come across this year that I have loved: Ciara Smyth’s The Falling in Love Montage (YA novel with lesbian representation), Robyn Schneider’s You Don’t Live Here (YA novel with bi representation), and Love, Victor (Hulu TV series with gay representation, a spin-off from the movie Love, Simon, the adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda).

And I know there are other authors and creators out there expanding this list and others even now as I write.

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It has been a long journey together. Hopefully I have made clear my pride in belonging to the LGBTQ+ community and – even on the days where it is difficult – my pride in myself.

This is something I believe:

We are who we are because we are born a certain way, with a certain set of genes, into a certain family, a certain place, a certain time. We are who we are because, in my belief, there is a Creator, a Master Storyteller, behind all of this, embedding within us stories worthy of heroes.

But we become who we are too. We become who we are because of decisions that we make, ideas that captivate us, media that portrays us – things that hold a mirror up for us. We become who we are because of each other, because we tell each other who we are, because we sharpen each other. We become who we are because, amidst billions of people, each of us is unique. Each of us matters. Don’t let nobody try and take your soul / You’re the original.^[1]

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[1] Switchfoot, “The Original,” Vice Verses