I caught myself in a very silly logical fallacy this morning. 

You see, I have a lot of baggage around thinking I’m safe, then being proven wrong. I have a deeply rooted fear of being unable to trust my assessment of reality. When I think of the worst times in my life, they were always born of this scenario: “I thought I was safe, I thought I was loved, I thought I was valued…and I wasn’t.” 

“My journey of sexuality was a clear one: after a lifetime of accumulating evidence, there was a singular moment of validation. I went from crushing on girls, to kissing girls, to that life-affirming night with the woman from the music show. The next morning, after she left, I thought, “Yep, I am absolutely, 100% not straight.” And anyone else would be hard-pressed to deny me that. I’d proven my queerness, as silly as that sounds…”

“I was in elementary school the first time I had a crush on a girl. I won’t share her name here, though I do remember it. She was Latina, with beautiful long curly brown hair and dark eyes. I always wanted to hold her hand…”

In her book We Need Your Art, Amie McNee talks about the practice of “coronating yourself as an artist.” She details the hesitation people feel claiming that title: the fear of presumption, of being judged, of not being legitimate enough…