been thinking a lot about my own queerness lately & was struck with the realization that it’s always been with me & i can look back at photos of my childhood & see it. i asked my mom this same question and she also replied “no”, but with the addendum of “i did think you were a tomboy” which i guess can also be true for straight girls but it made me realize that the past ten years of my life — years i’ve spent learning i’m now a Woman rather than a girl — have been spent trying to acheive what i think womanhood is based on how it was taught to me when i was a child. but i’m realizing… i didnt want it then and i dont want it now. not the way i’ve learned it. these two seperate journeys i’ve been on, one of inner child healing and one of queer self discovery, are actually one in the same. that little girl is me, she’s with me always, and i’m finding the more i let her take the wheel — pants instead of skirts, practical over pretty, tomboy over girly girl — the more comfortable i’m becoming with this body i’m in and the space i occupy. my parents never saw it, not really, but were loving all the same. but for little nini, the very serious, very “astute” tomboy: i see you, i know you, i love you.