Chapter Five – Pleasing You

Fitting in. Ever thought about it? And if you did, what did you have to go through in order to fit in? I’ll tell you what I went through, I changed who I entirely was and lived a whole lie.

First I hated myself, and then I tried to please them in order not to be seen as an outsider or a sinner.

More kids from the community knew, others gave me weird looks while others moved to the other side of the road when they saw me. Others came closer to me to fish some gossip, so they would have something to say in order to fit in with the popular kids.

My life was upside-down, and I felt like I was living a movie. I needed to live a peaceful life, I needed them to see that there was more to me than just being attracted to girls, so pleasing them became the only option.

At 15, I had my first boyfriend. He was cute and very clean and smelled so nice. Those were literally the only reasons I was close to him.

My friend would talk about their kiss and how amazing it was. Made me curious and also made me hate dating because I’d have to do that too at the end of the day.

I have to say getting the boyfriend was the best thing I could ever do. They started liking me and including me. They forgot that I still liked all the things that made me me which they once described as me acting like a boy. They didn’t call me out for playing football as the only girl among 23 boys, for riding a horse, for playing ‘masculine’ games. After having a boyfriend, everything they pointed out as weird became everything that made me me once again. It was like I was back to being that 7 or 13-year-old running behind her grandfather again.

As I continued to live this life I didn’t like, I hated people around me so much. That they turned my life so upside down. That the things that made me me only made sense to them when I was living my life the way they wanted me too. I was even thinking about stopping this so that I can live a free life. I was thinking about leaving even that nice boyfriend, so I could be alone for the rest of my life. Or maybe I could live in secret and be with a girl but pretend to be friends. That was a good plan.

But my plan changed when I heard on the news that a woman was brutally killed for kissing another woman.

Instead of living to please those around me. I started living in fear.