Content Warning: A long, tired coming out rant that many of you will actively forget, and I am well aware. But I hope some of you will listen, and listen deeply.

Because it has been 1 year.

4 years since I started coming out.

But 1 year.

1 year since I moved to Boston.

1 year since I developed new conclusions about my surroundings, about myself.

1 year since I walked in a city of my dreams up north without prior bounds consuming me further.

1, since I openly declared my sexuality on the Internet.

1 year since I walked a bit more freely amongst accessible roads and enormous buildings.

1 year since I sang a different song, wrote a different note.

1 year since I had a bit more bounce in my step, a rhythm to my jog and a leap to my sprint.

1 year since I was terrified as I poured out my heart over the web.

1 year since, as the words came out of my e-mouth, I still continued to suppress an important part of that sexuality. I still knew somewhere deep down in the subconscious I was actively unconsciously ignoring, that I was heavily closeted.

Still, the flowers are turning as I realize it has been more than a year.

1 year since I held a woman's hand in a northern Boston public and felt slightly less worried than I ever did before holding another woman's hand, feeling another woman's touch, gazing a bit longer into another woman's eyes.

1 year since I decided to try to pretend I can ignore the stares; the stares that some may glance past as simply those of another as they go about their walk. The same stares that automatically feel violent to me.

1 year since I remembered and started actively worrying about visiting my homes back down South.

1 year since I realized I really want nothing to do with ever living back down there again.

1 year since my voice began shaking as I speak those words.

Because it's been 1 year since I realized that might not actually be because of any personal choice I may have, but because of idolized hateful ideas of others that are so deeply engrained that I feel I can't touch them no matter how much I want to, no matter how I want to touch them, to mold them, how I cannot touch them but at the same time they touch and pervade me and my body, invade me and my body, take me and my body so thoroughly, so suddenly, so constantly.

1 year since I wondered even more if those are ideas that I cannot control.

1 year since I started to worry more if those are ideas I myself may not be able to help.

1 year since I continued to suppress so much when others gave me a strange glance as I smiled at them with a, "yes I am from Georgia, and I can't stand it."

1 year since it began breaking through my lungs to say so, shattering through my song of junebugs, wallowing cicadas and grasshopper-tuned evenings in a sweltering blanket of humidity that I know so well, ripping through my memories as if I am distancing myself from a deep part of where I come from, because of reasons I cannot control.

1 year since there are still people who will ask me "but it's not that bad, right? I'm sure you'll be fine..." and will reduce my fears, my lack of comfort, my nightmares that have shaken my body to its core, down to a simple "she's sensitive".

1 year since I realized actually how twisted it is that I cannot feel completely comfortable returning to my home city to live the rest of my life.

1 year since I realized how much that breaks my heart.

1 year since I just started quieting myself instead of attempting to explain to them a lifetime, a universe of confusion, shock and pain that is so tied to a Georgia that they see as the sweet southern slow they've been looking to move to after living in the northern city life that is "just too much" for them.

1 year since I realized the "just too much for them" is the home of some of the only comfortable environments, some of the only safe gay bars, some of the only spaces I felt I could fully breathe besides that of being in my mother's arms.

1 year since that tore another piece off of my Georgia June bug lungs.

1 year since I had to whisper "I'm sorry" to my lightning bug summers, my peachtrees as they flew and grew past my heart, knowing my immobility. 1 year since I had to send off my warm rains and melodious crickets to my memories, begging them to forgive me.

1 year since I realized how much it broke my heart.

1 year since explaining became too tiring. As if it hasn't been tiring enough.

1 year since I lost some of that fire, that fuel to explain.

1 year since I became angry at myself for losing a fire I didn't ask to be put out.

1, since I realized that moving up north didn't and will never fix my problems with my sexuality, problems created by others' discomfort but that have been given to me to never forget for the rest of my days.

1, since I decided to slightly stop hiding my anger and pain behind a sweet southern complex that I have built up even more over the years to make others feel comfortable around my sexuality and ideas of identity, after I twist an idea they've had for years on its head with the very fact of my existence and feelings-or after I become "sensitive" to someone's "it's just a joke".

1, since I used the privilege I have to be able to come out publicly more than many others in this world can.

1 since I started hearing more courageous open declarations of that pain of not being able to safely come out like I have, and 1 year since I have cried with them openly about that pain; pain that is such a part of our family that it is in our our blood, and it brings that blood to a violent boil.

1 year since I realized that I came out publicly on the internet not because I felt so empowered to do so, but because I found myself so angry and tired. So tired of keeping something in, of feeling like I need to explain myself to ANYONE, friend or not, about a part of myself already conveniently assumed for them.

Tired of even having to explain myself to those who question why I desire to spend much time in solitude.

Why I desire to be alone so I can BREATHE in that solitude.

Why I desire that solitude because it is friendlier than some of the crowds and even small groups I have been surrounded by.

Why it has been my method of survival ever since I was a young'n, ever since I realized I was that kind of different that makes people actively avoid certain kinds of conversation with me. Makes them afraid to ask me questions.

And If I feel the need to make straight people feel comfortable around my queerness, I can't imagine what it's like to be a queer person of color, to be a trans woman, to be a queer immigrant, navigating these systemic suppressors on a daily basis in addition to acts of violence I don't experience due to my whiteness and cis identity.

Here's me literally just putting forth a plethora of facts, because they are still not talked about enough; not acknowledged enough by those who need to acknowledge them; to show you again and again, how deep these feelings, ideas, identities, issues, go, and also how much a part of the world they are that you only need to skim the surface of their presence to deeply scar someone with your homophobia, your transphobia.

Why I wish that you wouldn't dare ever tell someone they can't be alone. Can't have room to breathe in their aloneness. Can't have time to form their own safe space because they've never been given one. Because your idea of "company" and "respecting others" might not be, and probably isn't, the same as theirs.

Because you have no idea what they are going through. Have no idea that solitude might be their way of survival.

I hesitated when I neglected to post something regarding national coming out day.

On this national coming out day, I did not post anything.

On this national coming out day, I felt guilty.

On this national coming out day, I felt angry at myself.

On this national coming out day, I did not come out, because I have before.

On this national coming out day, I resolved in the end that that isn't the point.

On this national coming out day, I may have subconsciously tried to live for once without feeling my identity creep into the back of my mind.

On this national coming out day, I angered at myself for my ignorance.

On this national coming out day, I resolved in the end that that isn't the point.

On this national coming out day, I guilted myself for neglecting a day that has been formed by a minority group of people so hurt by a majority that they felt they needed one day, just ONE, to try to reach out to those suffering silently because that's all many of them can do-suffer silently.

On this National Coming Out Day, I guilted myself for this.

On this National Coming Out Day, I resolved in the end that that isn't the point.

On this National Coming Out Day, I hurt myself further with this guilt that has been bred by a system that directly and indirectly hates us.

On this National Coming Out Day, I felt nothing but a continuance of that cycle of guilt and pain.

On this National Coming Out Day, I shivered at the prospect of coming out as pansexual, bisexual and lesbian.

On this National Coming Out Day, I further neglected my identity.

On this National Coming Out Day, I felt ashamed and responsible.

On this National Coming Out Day, they still laugh. They still jeer. They still turn their heads away from me.

On this National Coming Out day, I resolved in the end that that. Is not. the point.

I don't know about you, my reader, but I am so tired.

Tired of struggling more than I will ever tell you with the idea that my sexuality might be more fluid than I ever might have thought.

Tired of the fact that I know my anger and frustration about this will keep some of you from ever speaking further about it with me, because your desire for comfort and blissful ignorance presides over your responsibility as a human being to learn from, grow with, and respect other human beings. Because it blotches out the very least you can give some one. Of having conversations and giving someone time that quite literally might save a life. Don't believe me? Check the statistics of suicides and suicide attempts by LGBTQIA.

Tired of the fact that I literally cannot have some relationships in my life due to a part of me that is so engrained in me that if I were to attempt to rid of it, I would break one of my bones, I would scar my heart, I would tear out my eyes. Because yes, that is how much of a part of me it is. You would have me rip my bones apart, tear out my eyes, rip apart my heart to make you comfortable. To just stop talking about it. And still you claim you love me.

Listen. Take your blinders off, your earmuffs out, and spend some time with us to listen to the casual statements of aggression.

"But why has she claimed to be a lesbian?

"Why does she think she can talk so much about being gay?

"Oh so now she's bisexual?"

"Obviously it's all about sex".

"But how dare she, how dare they, have their cake and eat it too?"

"I'm comfortable as long I don't need to see it, as long as my children don't see it on television."

"They have marriage, and have already ruined that sanctity. What other special treatments do they want?"

And there are way more where that came from, my reader; I might have hid you from the worst.

But did you hear it? Can you hear it now? Will you hear us now?

Coming out does not have to be on one day. That is why I am posting this now.

Coming out does not even have to happen. That is why I am posting this now.

Coming out is simultaneously sometimes a privilege and a suffering. That is why I am posting this now.

I am tired.

I identify as pansexual on the spectrum leaning more heavily towards lesbian.

My love is so fluid, it flows like rivers over jagged rocks that keep telling it "no".

I am tired.

I will always feel closeted. That's the nature of the game.

I will barely ever speak of this at work.

I am tired.

I will laugh with you while I will never tell you the lengths to which I had to go to pull myself over these cliffs just to get myself to you here today.

I am tired.

I won't tell you how much I deleted from this post to keep making you comfortable.

I am tired.

I won't tell you how much it breaks my heart to be writing about this openly, as we still have such a stigma against open discussion of sexuality that it terrifies me to be this open about my pain, but how much I feel it is my duty to speak up if I feel I can and desire to, if it might have even the smallest chance of aiding someone else in search of some solidarity, some welcoming space, some peace, if even for a minute.

I am tired.

Tired of people throwing around "love you" in a text message like its nothing, like love is the easiest thing in the world, rather than stepping back and respecting how much that simple phrase might mean to someone who might never have had the chance of being able to safely and truly say it to the one they want to. Or for having their life cut short by those who didn't, or those who did, claim to love them, before they had the ability to say those three words, to feel it, to feel them, themselves.

Tired of people throwing around the word "family" like it's nothing, and scowling at me for questioning its meaning when the only true family I have ever known is one person related by blood to me amongst a handful of others who are so unrelated they might as well be strangers to you.

I am tired.

One day I might tell you more.

But for now, your act of STARTING these conversations allowing for LGBTQIA folx to safely express is a responsibility that will help you grow and learn about and from and respect your fellow human beings around you. Your actions, hell, your act of LISTENING, literally is an act of keeping someone alive.

So again, many of you won't read this.

But I hope you do.

Because on this National Coming Out Day, I realized it has been 1 year since my fire started too dwindle.

On this National Coming Out Day, I realized that I have yet another fire burning in me.

On this National Coming Out Day, I resolved in the end that my fire is rekindling. And that is the point.

On this National Coming Out Day, I resolved in the end that the point is all of these feelings are important. And all of these not feelings are important. And you are important. And we shouldn't have to do it alone. And that is the point.

On this National Coming Out day, I resolved to keep building my fire with you.

I am spilling my heart out in hopes that we start having more open and real connections, and less silencing of important conversations that literally cost lives.

But I know; you might scroll past this.

You might forget how much it affects us.

You might scroll past this. And I can already tell who probably will.

But I hope you don't. I hope you read with me. I hope you read with others and read others' stories.

I hope you cry with me.

I hope you don't smile with me.

I hope you smile with me, when you want to.

I hope you do read my heartstrings.

And if you do?

When it comes to me, it has been 1 year.

But you know why it feels like a lifetime?

Because it is. When it comes to us, It is a lifetime.

It is many of our lifetimes, whether you see it or not.

And if you don't see it, that very fact already speaks volumes.

So for you to act like it is a small part of me that doesn't deserve as much recognition as other facets, or doesn't deserve more recognition beyond one commercialized day, is destructive. It is destructive to us. It is your job to listen. It is your job to actively learn for yourself. It is your job to recognize that it is not just this one day. It is a lifetime.

For now. On this national coming out day, I simply reflected on how it is my resolve, my life, my responsibility, to keep standing with you, my brothers and sisters, misters and fritters of all genders, to be even angrier with you, to snarl even more at what you, what we still endure, to be with you in your tears, your heartache, your worries, your fears.

I will learn with you, fight against my own privileges and ignorances with you.

I will cry with you.

I will hold you as I hold myself, as best I can.

I will help remind you that you don't need to do it alone.

I will help remind you that we deserve better.

I will stare at those burning flames thrown before us, and hold your hand as we walk through that fire and choke through smoke to find air that finally keeps us warm as we keep each other, space that loves us as much we love, as much as only we've ever wanted to love.

That is what I am here for.

I love you. You are family to me. And I am here. Dear god, I. Am. Here.

And dear god, when they spit at you with saliva of poison and throw those shackling knives of hate, I will stand next to you and while you wield your heart's sword, I'll hold the shield. And by God, I will mean it with all of my broken heart.