I once had a dream where I was being chased relentlessly by VTubers for hours, believing that I had wronged them. In that very same dream, I successfully escaped the VTubers when I sought refuge in my father’s childhood home; in that very home, a video game character that I loved who shone with glitz and glamor of all her golden adornments was my cousin, and that very same video game character opened her arms and told me: “Don’t worry. I’m a lesbian too.”

The next morning, I woke up and became a lesbian.

Sort of.

Whenever somebody finds out that I am a lesbian, it always garners a mixed bag of reactions. Some people would immediately have this expression on their face like things suddenly clicked into place, while others would have such a huge reaction like they weren’t expecting me to be one. It was sort of understandable, given that I never really… look like a lesbian? Maybe it’s the lack of carabiners.

Oh, I don’t think I look straight, if that’s what you were thinking. I do try to look visually queer for the most part. I just don’t think people immediately go to the Oh, lesbian! conclusion in a cheerful tone or a positive light. Too frequently, people think being a lesbian — or just the identity, in of itself — is the punchline to a very strange joke. Tomboy nga naka-Mio, they’d have it, sneering, speaking with certain undertones that didn’t take one to be laughed at in the face to know they were being made fun of. 

To say it’s upsetting would be a grave understatement. It’s more than upsetting; it was personally degrading, to see my identity being the butt of the joke made by my own peers and self-proclaimed allies. Upsetting to see the identity I grappled with for years, to see that it’s so easy to be made fun of just because of how one chose to present themselves.

It wouldn’t be much of an understatement to say that I am proud of my lesbian identity, and finding it is a big highlight of my life. It’s not a lie when I say that lesbian is among my list of favorite words. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that the act of loving that exists without men in the equation is the best kind of love I could hope to receive one day.

And yet despite being surrounded by people who are lukewarm at least and supportive at most when it comes to queer identities and relationships, there is still this vague feeling of isolation and loneliness as a lesbian. This is something I personally struggle with, though a feeling I’ve seen a lot of other lesbians share: the loneliness it came with being the lone lesbian in a room.

Don’t get me wrong — I love all sapphic identities and I believe that this attraction should be celebrated and cherished. Sapphic relationships, after all, are often a glaring, red X-mark for a lot of homophobes and misogynists — try drawing a Venn diagram for these people and you’d come up with just a singular circle — due to it being (a) a queer relationship and (b)  a queer relationship with only women in it. Solidarity is given where solidarity is needed. 

Frequently, though, it feels to me that this isn’t enough; that in the end, I am solitary in my feelings of never feeling even a smidgen of attraction towards men.

By the time I woke up from my lesbian prophetic dream, I had a lot of conflicting feelings. It was hardly my first time receiving this sort of prophetic dream, though it was a lot more bizarre than the first. For some reason, I didn’t really brush it off like I did with other prophetic dreams (which included being stuck in a zombie apocalypse with a guy I do not know whose face and name I could see clearly being a friend’s seventh grade classmate, and later on, receiving a grade of 1.8 and a 1.7 in real life, but I digress). 

In the deepest pit of my stomach, I guess I always knew that being a lesbian was just a fact waiting to unveil itself when the time had been right — or when I was in the most conflicting period of my life, apparently, with how abrupt that realization came. It came with a sensation that was difficult to explain, mostly because it was like welcoming an old friend you had just met for the first time. You were never aware that in the end, everything you built was so they’d settle in; like an unfinished puzzle you never remember forming, only to find a puzzle piece that completed the whole picture. The satisfaction of finally seeing the whole picture? Unmatched.

Oftentimes, this feeling of satisfaction and contentment brings me back to the first time I’d “exhibit” signs of lesbianism in my early years. Setting aside the fact that Kim Possible was my first ever cartoon crush and that my tita felt as though I’d grow up to be a tomboy, the first time I genuinely felt repulsed at the thought of a man liking me, or the prospect of me liking him back, was when a friend in kindergarten expressed this type of childish crush to me. I’m not even kidding when I say that my reaction to that innocent, pure admiration was to cry.

In hindsight, that could probably be chalked up as just a little girl reacting to a foreign concept the best way she could, but it is funnier to say that the lesbianism was preordained by recounting unrelated memories, so I will keep doing that. Besides, there were other indicators that I would say was a part of the “lesbian brick road” (shoutout to my friend for coining this term; I cannot stop thinking about it). For instance, I would feel uncomfortable over the thought of a boy liking me. I still would, even when I discovered the concept of puppy love and crushing. I remember being posed with the question of why else I’d like someone if the endpoint wouldn’t be to date him, and I think my worldview that I curated for at least 10 years shattered right there and then. 

Nobody informed me that you wanted to date who you liked!

I had to question what it really meant to “like” someone, considering the “liking” I did was basically just me mirroring whatever I had heard and seen from my friends. I’d just pick a boy I wasn’t that familiar with — I made it a thing to “crush on” a new guy — and did whatever my friends did; seek out interactions, add them on Facebook just for the “thrill”, and occasionally did some risky thing like striking up a conversation with them, all while the prospect of my “feelings” being reciprocated something I was deeply repulsed with.

It wasn’t until recently did I experience the feeling of genuinely liking someone, and I guess that’s how I finally convinced myself that I truly am lesbian. Nothing screams stupid, illogical crushing than imagining going on dates with a girl you aren’t even friends with on Facebook (and crying over said girl getting a girlfriend).

I mean, a lesbian breaking free of compulsory heterosexuality just to be pathetic over a crush they don’t even have more than one (1) interaction with? Happens more often than you think it would!

It has been about three-almost-four years since I received my prophetic dream. Throughout those three-almost-four years, I have had to deal with this constant fear looming over my head; the feeling of me faking it, and that deep down, I am still the same girl that I had been. That everything has all been a ruse by some sort of powerful, mystical being in charge of my emotions and attraction just to attract male attention, but lesbianism is so, so much more than that. It’s not even about that to begin with! 

My identity of being a lesbian doesn’t only define my attraction and sexuality, but it’s also liberation; it is also empowerment. It is also standing up against the status quo, as well as looking patriarchy straight in the eyes and ignoring it. Being a lesbian allowed me to embrace myself, and it made me feel like I could breathe. It taught me that attraction and love should come from a place of kindness, not of suffocation nor validation.

Even so, to the me that had once existed but no longer do: you are still within me, shining, burning brightly, if only as a dead star lightyears away. That is to say you will stay with me for as long as I exist, as a remnant and a reminder of what I once was — and I think that is perfectly fine.

Or as the internet says it: my heterosexual past walked so my homosexual future could run.