I can’t be the only person out there who feels as though they aren’t quite queer enough. In my case I feel like it is a matter of erasure because my partner is male and to look at the two of us we appear to be like every other straight couple. But behind closed doors…

So I struggle with these feelings and I wonder and ask myself how can I overcome them or accept them? I’m not out to the community at large because I’m afraid of becoming a target for certain reasons, I’m not involved in my local LGBTQ community because I fear rejection if they say I’m not “queer enough” for them, and I’m not out to a lot of people simply because my sexuality isn’t their business. So in some ways I feel like I contribute to my own feelings of erasure. But when you fear for your safety or you fear rejection, how do you address it? What’s the next step?

I think that I have two choices here; I can work to get over these feelings and just let things lie as they are OR I can damn well make up my mind to do something about it. Screaming it from the rooftops seems like a poor idea (I’m afraid of heights anyway) and so does putting an ad in the paper because that’s just overkill and ridiculous. I just know that I want to address it somehow instead of ignoring it. How can I do so safely and in a way that gives me the validation that I’m looking for? Should I even be searching for validation from anyone but myself? Am I so insecure that I need an outside source to tell me that my queerness is OK? Maybe I am.

I’ve spent my entire life being insecure about one thing or another. My weight, my skin, my hair color, my big butt, you name a physical feature and it has probably bothered me at some point. And that doesn’t even touch on being insecure about things like feeling not smart enough or good enough or just being too different. And here I am again, finding myself to be different with my queerness and it causes me insecurity that I didn’t even know was there until I started writing this all out. I find this all to be incredibly frustrating, but perhaps it will be cathartic in the long run. Maybe putting in words will help me feel better about it, even if no one ever really reads this or shares any thoughts or discourse about it (although it’d be great if you did.) Perhaps I just need to be acknowledged as queer by someone or a few people. I don’t know.

Back to doing things to really draw people’s attention to how queer I am, maybe I could get a shirt with the world “Queer” printed on it. Maybe I could try to be someone I’m not and get a stereotypical haircut and try to dress more queerly (whatever that means). I don’t even know what that means or how I would wear my hair or dress to be honest. I’ve always been a super casual jeans and t-shirt kind of girl and trying to fake being someone else just seems like more work than it is worth,just to prove how queer I am. I should be able to be queer no matter how I look or dress. Yet I have this overwhelmingly nagging fear that I can’t be, that I’m not being authentic enough because I’m not out and loud and proud about it.

So I might buy the “Queer” t-shirt and if I do I’ll wear it with pride, I might go to a local LGBTQ meetup and see how it goes, or I might decide that I can afford to let a sleeping dog lie and find a way put the insecurities I have to rest. Perhaps it is enough for me to know myself and my sexuality and to just learn to be comfortable in my own skin.