Tell your {REAL} story: A call to action.

Growing up in a in Houston, as a member of a baptist church, in a tight knit very religious family, it difficult to be “confused” about your own sexuality. It’s even more difficult to want to share your coming-of-age story and being afraid of who you can tell without judgement. However, I believe the worst part of all is searching for a similar story and not being able to find one. Personally, this made my story feel more dark, dirty, and shameful than anything else. I searched as much as a 22 year old living in her mother’s house could. Secretly combing Netflix, searching Google, Hulu… Never finding a representation similar to mine. My story was a story of hidden love. I was in love with a girl who considered herself straight but had these burning experimental urges that she wanted to try out on me. My story ended in heartbreak when she decided she wanted to date my male best friend instead and depression when I wanted to mock a suicide scene I had seen in movie (thankfully unsuccessfully). When I wanted to share my story, I felt I had no outlet. No one would watch dark love story if it was a lesbian love story (or at least that’s how I felt). I wrote my screenplay but I made the characters straight, I made myself a sensitive emo writer type of boy and made her a reformed slutty ex-cheerleader. I felt it was the only way anyone would read it. A few years later, here I am, and my story is still not all that well received. I suspect it is because my heart is in not in it. The truth is not there. I have pledged to re-write my story in the way it actually happened, with two girls. I believe this is the time to tell our real stories. Our past will not look so unfamiliar to those in the future. They will feel a safe place to tell their story. They will experience stories similar to their own. These stories will be real and possible. If similar to my story, not the lesbian romance stories found on Netflix, not soft-core lesbian porn, but a real story with real emotions.