To Boys I Thought I Liked

To the boys I thought I liked,

Your attractiveness I found intriguing. 

Your popularity I found intriguing.

Your smile I found intriguing. 

You were the popular “cool” boys at school everyone seemed to like.

It started in second grade – your transcended confidence pierced my eyes and your likedness stung my heart. You were my newest crush. You all seem to come and go from elementary school even to college. I didn’t catch on but I hope I can now. I thought you were all funny… Thought. I told my friends about you at the time; I told myself you maybe would be my newest “boyfriend”; and I maybe even told my mom about you. Yet right when I would start to get to know you, I would hear it. I heard the phrase that destroyed your attractiveness, popularity and smile. The phrase that showed me your confidence was a disguise of toxic masculinity. The phrase that would lead me to move onto my next crush. “That’s so gay.” That. Is. So. Gay. You said that with the intention to hurt; an intention to sting your newest victim you called your friend. You perpetuated a world of homophobia that did not fit my queerspawn agenda. I lost all interest in you completely. Or I tried.  

There have only been two of you in my life whose micro aggressions of homophobia I tried to look past. I naïvely thought you would change; thought that I could change you. Until after those micro aggressions something big happened, a direct act of homophobia leading me to be only more hurt and in tears. See, I tried to sit down and have a conversation with you about what is being perpetuated and how it affects others. Yet your refusal to recognize my identity left me leaving the college library with tears running down my face or me driving away after brunch to once again feel the familiar sensation on my cheek. 

For my life is my family. It is my moms. It is my household. It is my upbringing. And it is my truth and it’s queer. To think that I would ever have feelings for someone who thought being gay was “unnatural” truly disgusts me. The thing is my family and I are not your “opinions”; my family and I are facts.

So to the boys I thought I liked: I ask you to take a step back. And realize that your actions have negative consequences not only on the people that are directly involved in your life but in society as a whole. Your words have impact. I can’t be with someone who tolerates intolerance and who deep down is the intolerance. 

Sincerely,
Emily or The Girl with Two Moms