Songs poured out of me after that. I finally felt free to write about my relationship. First, I wrote a song called “Cruel Is the Love”. It’s about how the person you love can piss you off, but if either of us is mad, we have to kiss and make up before falling asleep. “I am just a girl, and you are my living dream. I am just a girl, and you’re all that I’ll ever need.” I wrote a song called “Baby Doll”, where I talked about how I don’t want to go back in the closet now that I’m out. “Little white lies, and you’re kissing my thighs, and I never could find the cure.” And then I wrote my favorite song to date, a song that solidified my identity as a writer and my mission statement for all of my future work. The song is called “You’re Still My Sugar”, and it’s a punky power pop song about how everybody is brain-dead and totally sucks, except for my love. “I took a long walk / after we first talked / my tiny heart throbbed / you were my savior / and when we still kiss / I feel it like this.” It was the most honest I’d ever been. It was a celebratory song, a love song.

The song came across the Twitter feed of a writer at Billboard, and it got a lot of attention. Billboard staff named it the critic’s choice #9 Rock Song of 2017. I know at my core that external validation can never fill the holes that we want it to, and the last several years of my life have been extremely fulfilling because of how much love I’ve been surrounded by. I spent a lot of time and a lot of hard work finding my voice as a writer and artist, until I could make something that I genuinely liked as a listener. But what the success of that song gave me was acceptance, and it was a huge gift. Because with acceptance soon came pride.

I was proud of my girlfriend. I was proud of her talent and her wit and her relentless work ethic. I wanted people to know about her, about us – I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. I wanted people to know how cute our love story was. It made me realize that because of all of my internalized homophobia, while I was falling in love I didn’t find our romance cute. I was ashamed and scared. Now that I was being more open, honest, and positive musically than I ever had been, I was finding more success and genuine connection with people. I slowly grew braver and prouder, and soon I was able to say out loud how I identified: I am a lesbian. And it’s cool. It’s awesome. A happy relationship like ours is something worth aspiring for. My new mission was to show people that two girls falling in love is adorable, fun, and exciting.

So I wrote a song called “Loners”. I talked about being in college, sneaking around and keeping my romance a secret, but I didn’t include the anxiety and turmoil. I focused on the happy memories. Lying on the floor in her tiny attic-converted-bedroom, listening to music. Hooking up in the book stacks at the library – a USC rite of passage, although the tradition was traditionally celebrated by hetero couples from the Greek system. Making her late for work because we couldn’t stop kissing each other goodbye. I released a music video with this song, featuring old photos and videos of us at USC, throughout the years as we fell more and more in love.

TLDR: writing songs about being in love with a girl helped me come out of the closet.