In 1998, I sat down in my stylist’s chair with an image of Gwyneth Paltrow with the pixie minimize she made well-liked within the movie Sliding Doorways. It’s possible you’ll keep in mind the movie; in it, Paltrow’s character’s life splits in two. In a single model, she makes the subway because the doorways are closing; within the different, she doesn’t. Within the model the place she makes the subway, she arrives house early, definitely sooner than her boyfriend expects, to seek out him in mattress with another person. She leaves him, cuts her hair quick, begins a brand new life. Within the different model, she returns house as deliberate, holding her lengthy hair and her illusions.
My stylist first staged a mini-intervention. She informed me that whereas she may give me that haircut, it will not look precisely like Gwyneth Paltrow as a result of I didn’t have Gwyneth Paltrow’s hair. I did it anyway. She was proper.
Anytime I get my hair minimize, then and now, no small a part of me believes {that a} new me is about to emerge. Then the following day, I notice it’s simply me… with a hair minimize. It’s a tough lesson: You’ll be able to enhance and alter. However you’re nonetheless you. With highlights. A brand new job. A bolder lip.
Final yr, I ended a four-year relationship with a person, a NYC police officer. It was the longest relationship I’d ever had. And that was lengthy sufficient. I’d lived alone for 25 years and guarded my time and independence. And so I used to be sincere with him from the soar: I had by no means lived with a person and had no intentions of residing with one now. However he had beliefs, too, about how love would change an individual, and if not, {that a} gradual and predictable merging of lives was inevitable. However the fact was, I used to be nonetheless me… with a boyfriend. I known as it off, maybe later than I ought to have.
They are saying you possibly can’t simply flip a change and determine to be homosexual. And to be honest that’s not precisely what occurred: I’d had robust emotions for various girls over time — kissed my greatest good friend in faculty, developed a crush on a folks singer in my 20s, even slept with a couple of bored, bisexual wives in my 30s — however thought-about them occasional feverish exceptions at greatest.
In spite of everything, I’d dated males all my life and by no means questioned it in any possible way. Nor did anybody else. And that is how the thought of who you’re can set in: zero proof on the contrary. Even the ladies I did discover interesting for causes I couldn’t articulate appeared to strengthen my heterosexuality: I used to be so straight, I used to be even drawn to girls who appear to be males.
Yeah, that’s not what meaning.
A month after my breakup, and curiously, every week after I officiated my buddies’ homosexual wedding ceremony — coincidence? — I flipped my courting search to girls. Simply to see.
Many of the profiles didn’t enchantment to me. After which I noticed her: a girl with a bleached pixie minimize, a wing of blue hair over her eyes. She appeared much less like a girl and extra like a nymph, a fairy who’d seduce you in a yellow wooden and maintain you as her lover within the stomach of an previous elm for 100 years.
We matched. I gave her honest warning that I used to be the final particular person she ought to meet. First off, I used to be not homosexual — and what’s worse, I had simply damaged up with a long-term boyfriend.
“If I had been considered one of your mates,” I wrote, “I’d inform you to run.”
We met for espresso anyway. Then every week later, for brunch. I felt like I used to be making use of for a job I used to be not certified for. We kissed shyly on the nook of 72nd and Broadway, and I trembled the entire approach house.
“Do you want her?” my good friend requested. “I imply, do you need to date her or buy groceries together with her?”
I didn’t know. A part of me believed there was no lesbian on the planet who would take me severely. How may they? After I had so a few years of males to account for?
The blue fairy texted me the following day and mentioned I’d been on her thoughts. “I used to be pondering of your hair,” she mentioned. “I prefer it.”
“Why don’t I come over tonight?” she mentioned.
“Positive,” I replied. “Ought to I make dinner?”
“Let’s skip dinner,” she mentioned.
SOS, I messaged my buddies: “She’s coming over in an hour and we’re not having dinner. All caps. THERE IS NO DINNER.”
“You’ll be high-quality!” they informed me. “Have enjoyable!”
She arrived at 6 p.m. I needed to climb down from the ceiling to reply the door. I do know you don’t drink, I mentioned, however I’m going to want one.
I shook a grimy martini almost to demise within the kitchen after which sat beside her on the sofa. It felt like swinging each legs over a fence and making ready to leap.
After which she kissed me. I’m going to attempt to withstand all hyperbole once I say that it felt like I had simply surfaced from ten leagues below the ocean. As if I’d by no means breathed earlier than, and would by no means get sufficient air.
The following day was April eighth, and I keep in mind that as a result of it was the day of the photo voltaic eclipse. And whereas Manhattan wasn’t within the path of totality, the sunshine went down like a dimmer change, the colours flattening to sepia tone. My good friend Kim and I had been sitting on a wall within the park, taking turns peeking on the solar via these flimsy glasses because it waned to a shiny cuticle.
“So, that is taking place,” she mentioned. “Proper?”
It appeared a gross understatement to say sure. In fact, sure. I had by no means felt extra sure.
A couple of minutes later, the solar waxed to fullness, the colours returned, however nothing appeared the identical.
After I say I “got here out,” it’s not like I’d been harboring a secret. Extra like I’d stumbled upon one thing unbelievable, like a unicorn in my kitchen. How did that get there? What do I do with it? After which wanting to inform each single particular person I ever knew about it.
I can’t communicate for all late-in-life lesbians, however I believe I had it fairly simple. After I informed my buddies I used to be courting girls now, it was like I’d proven as much as brunch with bangs. They’re like, Whoa wasn’t anticipating that, however what’s vital is that you just like them.
Folks had been additionally fast to offer me an out — saying issues like, “You will not be homosexual, chances are you’ll simply be in love with this particular person.” However I didn’t should be shielded from it. Homosexual felt proper. It’s like saying, possibly you identical to this omelette; it might not imply the rest.
No, fairly certain I like eggs. Interval.
I fell so head over heels for this blue fairy, it shocked me and everybody else. Me, who’d all the time been traditionally sluggish to assert the girlfriend mantle and loath to let go of my single standing. Sure, I wished to be her girlfriend. Proper now. When she talked about presumably transferring out of her condo 10 blocks from mine, all the way in which to Brooklyn, I used to be inconsolable.
I used to be totally different with my girlfriend than I’d been with any man: light and accommodating, handled her like glass. I informed her she was the one one for me, and I believed it.
Perhaps this was my drawback! I wasn’t aloof and dedication phobic — possibly I used to be simply homosexual. And now that I used to be embracing who I used to be, certainly this may repair every thing.
However deep down, that a part of me who’d all the time fearful I wasn’t good sufficient, adequate, fairly sufficient, merely had a brand new concern: That I used to be not homosexual sufficient. That I used to be solely homosexual due to her, that I used to be merely… homosexual by affiliation.
It didn’t take lengthy, a month or two, for purple flags to emerge and for the blue fairy to disclose herself as a grasp manipulator. In July, issues constructed to a frenzied state: She accused me of getting the “mistaken attachment model”; I accused her of asking for greater than any particular person may give. We had been in all probability each proper.
You already know the place that is going. It ended as quick and furiously because it started. It was essentially the most excruciating breakup of my life.
My complete life, my concern of dedication had boiled right down to the idea that I might disappear right into a relationship with a person and stop to exist. And what should be blamed for me anguish now was that I assumed if I let her go, this homosexual model of me would go together with it.
It took me some time to acknowledge that I may and would nonetheless be homosexual with out this particular person. That what I used to be actually crying about was the lack of one thing I couldn’t really lose: myself.
I didn’t want a girlfriend to be homosexual, and I additionally didn’t have to vary. Briefly, I used to be nonetheless simply me… with a brand new sexual identification.
A yr later and I’m completely happy to report that I’m nonetheless right here. I’m nonetheless homosexual. Identical hair; new day.
Terri (proper) together with her sisters.
Pleased Pleasure Month!
Terri Trespicio is the writer of Unfollow Your Ardour: Methods to Create a Life that Issues to You. Her TEDx discuss, Cease Looking for Your Ardour, has been considered greater than eight million instances. She can also be the founding father of The New Guidelines Studio, a stay, real-time writing workshop for getting work accomplished. She earned her MFA in inventive writing from Emerson School and lives in Manhattan.
P.S. “What 9 motion pictures and exhibits with homosexual characters meant to me,” and the “little homosexual home” in Portland, Oregon.
(Illustration by Julia Rothman for Cup of Jo.)
