queerHeart: Faith. Sexuality. Community.

“Chi likes Ms. Tau!”

Those four words are all it takes to change everything that night. Down the basement stairs where a dozen 10-year-old girls fitted in all manner of dusty-pink and blue pajamas crowd over blankets, sleeping bags and bowls of popcorn and Snickers bars, swapping stories like bees with honey.

Except this new story shatters the giggles and crinkling of candy wrappers into horrified gasps and bewildered stares. Ten pairs of eyes and one proud smirk land on a ten-year-old with thick-framed glasses and not-yet-curly hair. A girl who struggles with a monster, but not the one the other smirking girl has so accusingly jerked into the spotlight. This monster creeps in whenever the glass-eyed girl finds herself shoved into a crowd’s shadow. Its grating rasp tickles her ear as it leans in close.

See? There is something wrong with you after all.

Shocked silence buzzes thick through the space now carved between the group and this other girl. Louder and louder it grows, and the monster curls its twisted claws over the girl’s shoulder and chuckles.

See?

Her soul wilts twisted like a strip of aluminum under crushing weight. This has happened before, though not for this reason. There are so many reasons now it seems, for those eyes to be on her with one burning sentence.

The thickening silence. Those bewildered eyes.

To the grief of the everything-sweet-and-lovely that has sung in her heart for the last year, the pain of that swarming quiet wins out.

“N-no I don’t!” she cries.

But what are her words against this queen bee of the swarm – a queen who shifts so easily between friend and foe?

All these years later, I still don’t understand what made this “queen” betray my trust. But not trust in the way of just keeping a secret. Up until that night, I didn’t even know that a girl having sexual and romantic feelings for a female (teacher or not) was something dangerous, at least, a danger to her being “accepted” by others. When I told my friend that I had a crush on our beloved school teacher, I had no idea what a weapon that would be set in the wrong hands.

I did know the excruciating grief of being shut out by those I so desperately wanted love and connection with. I can still see that girl – a wild-hearted, bright-minded soul who found beauty and delight about her as easily as a bird in the sky. The trouble seemed to be finding others who genuinely felt that way about her. She got shut out often for seeing and feeling things differently, especially by prominent figures in her life – family, one small-minded school teacher, and so-called best friends who were bullies in disguise.

I’d like to say my little self shook it off, that she called out the true monster in the room for what it was. But how can you call a lie what others have twisted to make your reality, what they claim is your truth?

That ill-fated sleepover passed, and I tried to move on. I still danced to Chicago crooning from my parents’ 6-disc CD system in the dining room, still shimmied and sang to the kitchen broom as my stand-in dance partner. But I wasn’t singing to a woman anymore. I refused to imagine the thrill of sweeping her off her feet with my masculine-charged passion and romance. Of kissing her so hard she saw stars.

No. No more.

That confident desire for the female was eroding, so Chi focused her fantasies and attractions on boys instead. At least that wouldn’t get her mocked or ridiculed. At least that wasn’t dangerous. At least that wouldn’t threaten anyone.

Oh, think again.

Seven years later…

“It’s SO obvious she likes him.”

Chi’s insides curdle at the hiss in the words, even though they’re being delivered to her second-hand by a classmate almost a year after the fact.

“Chi,” said the classmate first. “What was going on with you and Zeta last year?”

The question appeared like a phantom in the dark, nearly knocking Chi off her perch on the ladder where she’d been fixing a set piece for the school musical. An awful pain twists through her chest like a piece of leftover shrapnel; she tries to shake it off with a shaking voice. “What do you mean?”

Undogged, the classmate hands her an extra screw and continues, “Well, queen bee and I were in class last year, and I heard her talking about you and him. ‘It’s SO obvious she likes him,’ and stuff like that.”

“Oh,” Chi replies. The piece of grief bites its way through her heart and her stomach feels more than a little sick. She’s suddenly grateful for the dark of the backstage curtains that shield her reddening cheeks.

“Well, I think Zeta liked you, but queen bee tried to convince him otherwise.”

“Yeah,” Chi whispered, feeling suddenly cracked open and so wrong about everything she had felt that year before.

Long after play practice has ended, those words echo still in her head as she falls asleep. How those words grin wide from the shadows.

So obvious. So obvious.

This is what happens when you like someone, Chi, smirks the monster. It never ends well.

In the aftermath of a grievous heartbreak, those words belonged to a jealous queen bee, in high school of course, who had been grumbling about me almost a year before when she was dating a dear friend whom I loved very much. I struggled with my budding feelings for him long before queen came into the picture, and, combined with a neglected and starved sexuality, was in denial about his reciprocative feelings for me. But our friendship fell apart in a miasma of confusion and brokenness soon after he graduated. Zeta moved on and I was shut out in the cold again with that snickering monster for company.

See?

And there it was again – except instead of a smirk it was a sneer. My deep-rooted affection for someone was dragged out into the public eye as a threat.

But why, why does it have to be seen that way?

Anyone who remembers a crush in their high school years probably gets the adolescent turmoil of not wanting the person you like to know that you like them. It seems so silly compared to the confidence my younger self had in elementary school. Before the sleepover at least, she had no reason to care what others thought about who she liked.

But in compassion to our teenage selves, I think the turmoil comes from knowing more how the world can hurt us when we offer our hearts open. The task of simply being ourselves comes perhaps more naturally as kids- there’s less societal and peer pressure to fight, though my little self knew plenty about pressure and bullying. Teenagers however are caught in the angst of disillusionment and think it’s better to keep your cards close to your chest. Better to not get hurt, not ruffle any feathers. At least, that’s what my teenage self thought, and boy did she keep her wild-sexuality reined in tight. More like smashed in with a vice. But even denying that seemed to still get her in trouble.

Thank God I’m learning better now.

In the mid-years of therapy, my therapist and I hit a turning point with my anxieties of being “discovered” for liking someone. It came in tandem with reclaiming my sexuality (at least towards men) and taking confidence back from the clutches of an eating disorder. And it’s continued to grow by returning back to that little Chi who unflinchingly fantasized about presenting flowers to make women swoon and flirted with boys she liked. It was the seed of a lesson that continues to bloom inside my heart: I don’t need to be ashamed of liking who I like, and I don’t need to be ashamed of someone knowing I like them.

Yes, there’s a ton of vulnerability in my affections being exposed, of being rejected or shunned or laughed at. But if this is a place, a group of people, who laughs at a girl for showing a slice of her beautiful heart, is this place worth calling home, trying to make herself fit for? If this is a man or woman who refuses more than a glimpse of her God-given light, who slams the door tight in her face, is he or she a partner who will match the honor of her own spirit, help her flourish and be nourished by her?

As I’ve learned to embrace and hold on to more and more of my truest, God-given self, it’s become easier to tolerate that buzzing space of my exposed heart and the world around me. When I notice an attraction to someone, man or woman, I settle in and enjoy it, no matter what their reciprocation may be. I don’t have to “act cool” or be detached to try and protect myself from potential heartbreak. It sucks when it still happens, but the pain of conforming to others’ expectations or comfort levels is far worse. Conforming only ever wounded and silenced the sexuality that is only mine and brings out the best of me.

Yeah, that’s it. I want to be connected to a sexuality that brings out the best in me, even if it brings out the worst in others.

It’s still scary. Still jittery and nerve-wracking at times. But I’m lucky to have found a few who see the open parts of me and choose to wipe the buttery popcorn bits off their fingertips to cross over and put their hand in mine. It’s easy to forget, in the humming silence that seems to be only everywhere, especially in this time of life in 2025. Still, I’m writing this post to whisper back to the stunned silence, that grinning monster in black.

I’m the girl who courageously loves, who shows up and delights. No matter how others react. No matter if that delight isn’t returned back.

I’m the girl who likes who she likes.