Don’t read if you don’t want spoilers.
Being queer in 2024 is a harrowing experience. While it’s true that being queer has never been easy, the challenges we face today feel heavier and more relentless than at any other point since the AIDS crisis. The reality of our existence seems to erode with each passing day, and I can no longer ignore or sugarcoat the truth. Pretending that America doesn’t view me and others like me as second-class citizens is an exhausting charade. Every day feels like a battle to defend my humanity and right to simply exist, and the weight of this struggle is growing increasingly difficult to bear.
I’ve been dreaming of finding my person for as long as I can remember. As a little girl, I’d look up at the stars very cheesily, wondering where they were and what it would feel like to find them at last. Even now, as an adult, that dream hasn’t quite left me. It’s been a constant, quiet light guiding me through dark moments in my life. It’s a hope I’ve held on to: a belief that lasting love is real, that it could exist for me, and that it has the power to change everything.
This warm, fuzzy sensation of longing has been with me for as long as I can remember. It’s a longing for something that feels just out of reach, something I can sense deep inside, but can never fully name. It’s as if there’s a part of me that knows this feeling, like a forgotten memory on the edge of my consciousness. This yearning is both a comfort and a mystery, a pull toward something I can’t quite describe, yet it feels like it’s been waiting for me my whole life. It lingers in the spaces between my thoughts as a silent promise of something I’m meant to find.
But if I’m being honest, I think I’m full of bullshit. It feels like a story I’ve told myself to stay afloat, a comforting lie to keep the truth from swallowing me whole. No matter how much love I give, I can’t shake the fear that it won’t be returned, at least, not in this lifetime, and not the kind of lasting love I crave. Hope is slipping through my fingers, no matter how desperately I try to hold on. I don’t know how to stop it, and I don’t know how to explain this to anyone. So instead, I’m here, letting these thoughts spill out into the safety of my writing. There’s some comfort in these words, even though they carry a truth I’m struggling to face; the slow, steady fading of a belief that once felt so solid.
I can’t help but feel like I’m running out of time. I’m afraid to share this with anybody because I don’t want to be told that it’s nothing. It certainly feels like more than nothing to me. It’s a quiet, creeping dread that won’t leave me alone, and it’s not unwarranted. I’m tired of bottling it up, so here I am, writing into the void because I don’t know where else to put it.
This summer, I found out my heart isn’t healthy. After nearly three years of fighting to get my life together—to build something meaningful—I was blindsided by this issue. I finally started moving forward, only to be reminded how fragile everything still is. The gravity of that realization has been a lot to withstand. At least once a day I think about the effort I have put in and how it could all be ripped away from me.
I’m not pretending I’ve never been in love, or that nobody has ever been in love with me. The opposite is true. In the past, I’ve loved deeply, and in return, I have been loved back with an intensity that has changed me. I’ve hurt more people than I care to recall, each a testament to my flaws in their own way. And yet, my own heart has been shattered too, again and again in ways that still ache deeply at times. Each love, each heartbreak, has left a permanent mark; and whether it was with a boy or a girl, it may have been excruciating at times, but never unwelcome.
But I need to name what’s truly hurting me now, to strip away the layers and confront the raw truth: this pain is not rooted in any of my heterosexual relationships. It is rooted in my queerness, in my deliberate choice to seek a female partner over a male one. The yearning for love is already a heavy burden, but the way the world views the love I’m searching for as an adult: dismissing it as lesser, demanding it be explained or defended, wounds me the most.
It’s draining to exist in a world where my love is seen as a political statement instead of something genuine. Even simple acts like holding hands feel like defiance, a reminder of the risks others don’t face. I’m exhausted from constantly defending my love, something that should never have been questioned to begin with. All I want is a love that doesn’t have to fight for its place—one that’s safe, simple, real, and unquestioned.
It’s taking a direct toll on my heart—literally. I’ve been told that stress could be carving time off my life. And still, the pressure feels relentless, like the world is crushing me.
I feel so alone in this, like no one else could possibly understand the full extent of what I’m going through. Then I feel selfish for feeling that way because other queer people also suffer. And when it all becomes too much, my worst habit kicks in: I shut down. I pull away from the people who care, retreating into the false safety of isolation. I tell myself it’s easier this way, but all it does is magnify the sensation, making it harder to bear. It’s a vicious cycle and a battle with one of my demons who refuses to die.
Then I had the silly little thought to read a silly little book, hoping it might distract me from everything on my heart and mind. A friend had recommended Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, and now all I can say is that this book has me in physical agony. It’s not just a story; it’s a mirror, a wound, a weight I wasn’t ready to carry, but I couldn’t put it down.
It captures what feels like the heart of my existence: the most intimate moments I’ve shared with others, always tucked away in a bedroom with the door locked. And while most people associate bedrooms with physical intimacy, that isn’t what I am refering to. I’m referring to the quiet, sacred spaces where we laid our hearts bare to each other, where our deepest emotions, fears, hopes, desires, and memories were shared, where we planned our escape from the hatred we’d known, where we swore that being young didn’t diminish the weight of our love. These moments were always hidden from a world that was never meant to see them for what they truly were.
David, the main character in Giovanni’s Room, recounts hooking up with his friend Joey during a sleepover, avoiding him for the rest of the summer and later bullying him as Joey’s mental health visibly deteriorates. As I read it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I am Joey, and Joey is me. David’s shame and fear of their intimacy, his need to suppress something too raw and real, mirrors what I’ve endured. I’ve been pushed away after something that felt too right to be wrong or immoral, facing rejection and cruelty from someone I trusted. Baldwin captures that pain with devastating clarity: the heartbreak of being abandoned and left questioning what went wrong by someone drowning in their own insecurities.
Being bullied by someone who was my lover was so painful. Giving them my trust, my vulnerability, my love, only to have it weaponized, was something that felt like the ultimate betrayal. Love, which should have been a source of strength, became a source of pain. Yet, I blamed myself, looking for an answer to a societal problem that was never mine to solve. Baldwin’s depiction of this dynamic resonates deeply, bringing me back to moments when I’ve faced similar treatment.
I have to admit, ever since I read that part of the book, I can’t stop thinking about Joey.
For me, it wasn’t fleeting or a one-time thing. We were together in secret for two years, not for any thrill but for survival. Her safety was always at risk. While my mom already suspected I was queer and accepted it, my then-partner’s devoutly Catholic family believed we were just friends. Her mother actually threatened her with conversion therapy in front of me.
Yet when I tried to end our relationship, she told me that wasn’t what she wanted. So, for two years we stayed together in secret.
A lot changes between being 14, realizing you are more than friends, and nearing senior year, when you’re about graduate and leave for college. Those years had beautiful moments, but by the end, the pressure built resentment between us. For two years, we basically ignored each other at school to avoid suspicion, which took a toll on me. But when someone is begging and crying for you on the phone at 2 am, then ignoring or even bullying you the next day, that is what seriously messes with your head. It took a lot of therapy to process all of that before I could even consider another same-sex relationship.
Years later, David meets Giovanni, and their connection is immediate. After some initial denial, David follows Giovanni to the room where he’s been staying. Giovanni, certain David will see it eventually, insists there’s no need to delay. Though David is hesitant, they hook up and soon begin living together, settling into a routine within the confines of the room. Outside, Giovanni works as a bartender, while David waits for his fiancée, Hella, who is in Spain deciding whether she wants to marry him.
Giovanni’s sentiment resonates with something much deeper than physical intimacy. Though I’ve had public same-sex relationships as an adult, some of the girls I’ve felt most deeply for were either not in official relationships with me or were, like before, confined to bedrooms that mirrored the one where my entire romantic life once existed.
The more I read Giovanni’s Room, the more I saw my own experiences reflected in Baldwin’s words. David’s internal battle, from his fear of fully embracing his love for Giovanni, to the way he ultimately betrays him out of shame, is almost too familiar. It echoes the way I’ve often had to hide my relationships, the way I’ve fought to keep them secret because of the world’s refusal to understand, let alone accept, my love. I’ve lived those moments in my own life: the quiet, desperate attempts to protect what little I have left when it feels like the world is determined to destroy it.
Baldwin’s story lays bare the trauma of secrecy and shame that so often accompanies queer love, especially for those of us who have spent years trying to make sense of it within an environment that would rather ignore us altogether. The guilt I felt, especially in my earlier years, mirrors the guilt David grapples with in Giovanni’s Room, as though the love I sought was somehow wrong, or too dangerous to openly claim.
Reading the novel has made me confront these parts of myself I’d rather ignore: the parts where fear has taken root, and where shame has dictated how I love and how I receive love. Much like David’s rejection of Giovanni, I’ve been ashamed to fully embrace the depth of my queerness, even when it was the most honest and genuine thing I’ve ever known, and I have felt the hurt that comes with that shame existing in the person I loved. Giovanni’s Room reveals the scars of living in a world that forces you to choose between love and survival, between the truth of who you are and the lies you tell to protect yourself. I’ve loved in secret, and I’ve been loved in return, only to be hurt by forces beyond my control—forces that make love feel like a battlefield instead of a sanctuary.
David’s realization of his own cowardice, the way he allows Giovanni to be destroyed because of his own fear, hits too close to home. I’ve seen it in my own relationships, where self-doubt and fear still sometimes cloud the way I interact with those I care about most. But perhaps the hardest part, the part I am still learning to navigate, is the slow process of healing from these wounds, especially when the world keeps reopening them, when it keeps telling me that my love is unnatural or something to be hidden.
Giovanni’s death, and the way it haunts David afterward, is a painful reminder of the consequences of living in denial. Baldwin doesn’t just tell a story of love, loss, and betrayal; he tells a story of what it means to be queer in a world that demands we be less than we are, that pushes us to question the things that give our lives meaning.
The scars Baldwin describes are the same ones I carry with me. They’re the ones that show up in my dreams, in my fears, in my hesitations. Yet, like Baldwin’s characters, and like every queer person on the planet, I carry them because they are a part of me. They shape who I am, how I love, and how I fight for my right to exist as I am. As much as it pains me to say it, Baldwin’s words serve as a mirror to my own struggles, my own heartbreak, and my ongoing journey to understand what it means to love and be loved as a queer person in a world that insists on complicating it.