PRIDE

Every June, the world gets a little louder, brighter, sparklier, and significantly more rainbow-covered. Basically, Target throws up glitter, corporations suddenly remember gay people exist, and everyone starts arguing about flags like we’re preparing for a very dramatic game of Capture the Rainbow.

And honestly? I love it.

I love Pride Month.

I love what it stands for. I love the people who fought, screamed, marched, cried, loved, and refused to disappear so the rest of us could take up space. I love the celebration of being different, loud, soft, complicated, fabulous, quiet, confused, certain, healing, growing, and fully human.

What I do not love?

Labels.

Labels and I have a complicated relationship. Like, “we dated briefly in our twenties and now avoid eye contact at Safeway” complicated.

I know labels can be powerful. I know they can help people find language, community, belonging, and safety. I will defend every person’s right to choose their own label with my whole chest. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans, nonbinary, pansexual, questioning, unlabeled, still figuring it out, none of your business — I love it. I support it. I will stand beside it.

But for me?

Sometimes a label feels less like a name and more like a cage.

As if that explains me.

As if that excuses someone else’s cruelty.

As if that gives anyone permission to stop seeing me.

Am I gay?

Am I lesbian?

Am I bisexual?

Am I queer?

Am I supposed to check a box, laminate it, wear it on a lanyard, and present it at all social gatherings?

Here is the most honest answer I have:

I am human.

I am attracted to women.

I have only fallen in love three times in my life.

All three were women.

That is my truth. It is not confusing to me. It may be confusing to other people, but respectfully, that sounds like a them problem.

I do not need a committee meeting to approve my identity. I do not need a panel of strangers to vote on my sexuality. I do not need someone who still thinks cargo shorts are formalwear to explain my own heart to me.

My heart knows what it knows.

And maybe that is the most Pride Month thing I can say.

I am proud.

Not because I fit perfectly into one word.

Not because I can explain myself in a way that makes everyone comfortable.

Not because I have always been brave, certain, or healed.

I am proud because I am still here.

I am proud because I have loved deeply.

I am proud because I have survived people misunderstanding me.

I am proud because I have spent too much of my life being told who I am by people who did not even bother to know me.

And I am proud because I refuse to do that to anyone else.

So here is my little love poem for Pride Month — for the three loves, for the mirror, for the parts of me I have tried to name and the parts of me I have finally stopped explaining.

The Three Loves

I have loved three women

and each one held up a mirror.

One showed me my fire,

the wild in me,

the part that would burn the whole map

before asking permission to leave.

One showed me my softness,

the ache in me,

the part that still believed

love could be gentle

even after it had not been.

One showed me my truth,

the quiet knowing,

the part of me that no label

could hold long enough

to define.

Three loves.

Three mirrors.

Three ways of seeing myself

without needing to be translated.

And when I looked closely,

I was not a diagnosis.

I was not a category.

I was not a warning label

for someone else’s comfort.

I was a woman.

A heart.

A body.

A story.

A storm.

A home.

I was human.

And I was proud.

That is what Pride means to me.

It is not just rainbow shirts, although let’s be clear, I fully support a good rainbow shirt. Especially if it has sequins. Or profanity. Or both.

Pride is the radical act of letting people be.

Letting people name themselves.

Letting people change.

Letting people refuse a label.

Letting people choose one.

Letting people love who they love without turning it into a courtroom drama starring your unsolicited opinions.

Pride is saying: you get to be uniquely yourself.

And I will protect that.

I will protect your right to be loud.

I will protect your right to be quiet.

I will protect your right to be labeled.

I will protect your right to be unlabeled.

I will protect your right to be figuring it out.

I will protect your right to be fully, wildly, beautifully, inconveniently you.

Because I know what it feels like to be reduced.

I know what it feels like to be misunderstood.

I know what it feels like to have people take one piece of you and use it as the whole story.

And I refuse to live in a world where we keep doing that to each other.

So this Pride Month, I am celebrating every person who has ever had to fight to be seen.

I am celebrating everyone who knows exactly who they are.

I am celebrating everyone who is still figuring it out.

I am celebrating the people with labels, without labels, between labels, beyond labels, and completely uninterested in labels because they are busy drinking iced coffee and trying to survive capitalism.

I am celebrating love.

I am celebrating humanity.

I am celebrating the right to be complex.

And I am celebrating me.

Not the version of me that fits perfectly into someone else’s understanding.

The real me.

The woman who loves women.

The woman who hates being reduced to a diagnosis.

The woman who has loved three times.

The woman who is still soft.

Still strong.

Still funny.

Still healing.

Still human.

Still proud.