Member-only story
About Me — Caleb Dempsey
Still becoming, still unbecoming
I didn’t set out to become a writer. It was more like returning to something I’d always known, like coming back to a part of myself I’d tucked away just to survive.
I grew up in Malanda, a small town in Far North Queensland, Australia. Where difference is noticed before it’s understood, and silence often says more than words ever could. We weren’t a family that did emotions. Affection was rare. Vulnerability was a risk. I became fluent in the language of pretending, of shaping myself into whatever felt safest at the time.
I was teased for being gay long before I’d even said the word aloud. That kind of thing sticks. It gets into your bones. I spent years wondering if I was always this way, or if I simply became what others had already decided I was. Either way, I learned to stay small. To smile when it hurt. To perform safety instead of living in truth.
But over time, the version of me I was performing stopped fitting. It cracked at the edges. The words I’d been holding in for years started to rise. And so, I wrote.
Writing wasn’t a job. It became a way to understand myself more deeply. I started sharing my thoughts on Facebook, sometimes quietly, sometimes with raw urgency. What began as casual status updates slowly turned into something else…
