It’s a staircase.

I haven’t reached the top yet, either. Frankly, I’m not sure I ever will.

Coming out is not a new topic for LGBTQIA+ writers, but it’s a key facet of our identity often overlooked by our cisgender and heterosexual friends. Even I sometimes forget it’s an ongoing process, until circumstances require me to expose myself once more to the opinions of someone I don’t know that well, and I quickly breeze through the cursory title accompanying my partner’s obviously male name.

Yet another reason I am moving away from the word boyfriend: to someone looking for a way to understand…