Gone to Carolina
I expected to have some nostalgic feelings while doing this project, but I did not predict the floodgates that have erupted from reviewing and reading a very pivotal time in my life. It all feels like a dream or someone else’s life, but the letters drag me back to the reality that it was a life lived and trudged through. Being a teenager, going through hormonal and bodily changes is traumatic enough, but add in heteronormative-smashing feelings of same-sex attraction and it becomes a lot. It does not help that I am a highly sensitive person who feels everything tremendously. Through therapy I am understanding it is a superpower- it is what makes me good at my job, to advocate for my patients and care for them. However, wearing your feelings on the outside of your skin is also very uncomfortable, painful even. It has taken me a long time to figure out how to name the feelings, accept them and release them.
I am saying all that to say that this project is emotionally really hard but also incredibly satisfying. I do think putting our story out to the world is important. It is about representation and identity. It also is just two juicy love stories. And I think the world needs some love stories right about now. So I will continue for you, dear readers. I will continue to “show my belly” and be vulnerable because I think there’s a purpose to this.
I went through my own shoe box of letters and realized I do not have them organized well. They are a bit out of order. The next letters are actually before I move out of my mom’s house- it is a weird period of freshman year in which I decided to go to NC for a semester to stay with my dad because of some heart break by a boy. Yes, my heart did pine for the XY chromosome once, for a short while. Then I understood why I felt gross whenever things started to get intimate and more than just hand holding and light kissing. I always say I fell in love with Tiffany on a train ride in middle school to DC. I didn’t know my heart belonged to her then, but we were connected after that all night ride. The picture is from that DC trip. But I digress....Read on...
