So I fell off-track. A monthly occurrence, to me. After the period pain has subsided, I have to spend all my energy picking up on what got left behind when the pain was the master of my being. Work comes first. Then, the home. When I'm back on track with the mind, a week has passed.
Only now, I'm sick. Tonsilitis probably, I'll have to visit the doctor on Monday. I spent yesterday after work mending. Mending a jacket for my brother, mending a flannel I got from my late grandpa, mending my sleep shirt that had a hole in the armpit. It feels pretty meditative to do hand-sewing.
Now I'm trying to mend my mind, while also trying to mend my throat by drinking copious amounts of tea and wearing my scarf.
Last night I watched this video essay about But I'm A Cheerleader because I love this movie so much and sometimes the YouTube algorithm is actually useful. As usual, I was lamenting about not having seen it when I was a teenager, in fact, I first saw it less than a year ago, being 27.
It got me thinking if I really ever saw queer (and especially sapphic) representation in the media I consumed or was aware of growing up. Mind you, I know some queer and queercoded media existed back then (I mean the very movie I talked about did exist). But I wasn't really allowed to watch TV, nevertheless in the evening when movies aired. I also didn't really seek out the TV in secret, except to watch iCarly sometimes.
When I started actively watching movies around age 14, it was mostly the things my dad liked. And yeah, I love Star Wars and action and martial arts movies can be so fun! I just never saw any rom-coms, teen movies and the like. The only rom-com I remember watching was Friends With Benefits (2011) that I watched with the guy who would turn into my friend with benefits and later on into my third and last boyfriend, 5 years ago.
Books were a different but not better affair. I've been a reader ever since I could read, and I read the magic treehouse series, then TKKG (German series about a group of teenage detectives), got obsessed with Harry Potter (fuck JKR), then as a teenager, I was mostly into YA thrillers and the occasional fantasy, basically whatever my library had that sort of fit those. They did not have anything queer with that, at least nothing that I remember, and I'm pretty sure I would remember that. In fanfiction, I started reading straight pairings (at 14 years old), accidentally read a fic that only started straight, and from then on, it was yaoi for me.
The real life was fully straight and cis. I didn't know queer people until some of my friends came out to me or I to them as bisexual after I realized at 17 (which I don't use anymore). We were never taught about queer relationships, and "schwul" (gay in German) was only ever used as a slur (when I was 10-12-ish). After that, it wasn't really talked about at all. The online spaces I frequented from 14 onwards were better, but since it was online, the other people's lives didn't feel like something I could do, myself. I'm not sure why there was this disconnect, but maybe because I never actually saw it, just read little posts and snippets.
I guess this all is to say that the comp het was all around me and that I'm sad it was that way. At the same time I'm glad that queer representation is much more prevalent in media nowadays and that queer kids are able to just come across it.
Going back to But I'm A Cheerleader, that movie touched me deeply, and I don't think I've gone more than a couple days without thinking about it, ever since I first watched it. This fundamental truth of it being okay to be queer, that it's possible to have a happy ending, even if the world around you doesn't seem like it would be possible. That.
(Slight spoilers ahead for this paragraph) Seeing Megan and Graham going from not really liking each other to developing this intimate relationship under those awful circumstances. That scene in the gay club, where they see other queer people being happily themselves. Seeing that they're desirable. And for me specifically, Graham's vibes feel similar to my own, and seeing her with Megan made me understand that I like the more feminine girls, and that more masculine girls/people are desired, because I never understood the appeal personally.
All of those are reasons why I wish I had seen this movie as a teenager already. I might have realized some things earlier. But one can't change the past, one can only change the present and future, and in overall lifespan, I'm still quite young.
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