Two years after that very first foray into my own queerness, Robyn released her album Body Talk pt. Once that seed is discovered, it needs time and space to germinate, often in the shadowy corners of our mind. When we’re young especially, our queerness is considered in quiet, stolen moments. At the beginning of our lives as queer people we come out, often to mixed reviews, and spend our remaining years reliving that experience-coming out again and again and again, trying to find and craft our space in a world not really designed to fit our own.

In fact, queerness as a whole can be an inherently lonely experience. The exploration and acceptance of queerness can be an inherently lonely experience. But through the fabric of each of these stories, one singular thread runs through them all: isolation. They’ve written letters, or had awkward meandering conversations with their parents, or never have. They’ve come out in tents, in church, at dinner, at a funeral (not recommended). There are some who did it with a loud, unwieldy bang and others who whispered it so softly that no one really heard or noticed. Most of my friends have a ‘coming out story.’ That’s both to say that most of my friends are queer and that they all have a unique story draped over the experience of coming out-there are those who did it at school, those who waited till their late twenties.

Robyn dancing on my own album cover