Because I am super new to blogging and also a recovering technophobe who still has no idea how to use Instagram or FaceTime or Snapchat, I’ve signed up for emails and prompts on how to blog and my last one was all about choosing your title and tagline.
My new title is ‘The Pineapple Chronicles’. Considering what this blog is about, I’ll admit that it’s an oddly cheery title. I guess I should have called it something more tragic, really, like ‘The Fallen Swallow’ or ‘The Crying Swan’ or the ‘The Hungry Robin’ (okay, that last one might be a bit off, I ran out of bird-themed reasons for unhappiness). But, the truth is, when I thought about it, I knew that my blog title had to contain the word ‘Pineapple’ even if it accidentally attracts unsuspecting readers looking for tropical fruit recipes.
*Queue flash black transition sound*
I started my first serious relationship with a boy when I was 15. Of course, in an ideal world, I would have been with a girl (who would have been the teenage lovechild of youtuber Stevie and Adele Exarchopoulos), but those were the days when everyone thought that all lesbians were butch and could only become PE teachers, and I had long hair and a thin frame and was really, really bad at netball (“I said, PIVOT, Rowan. PIVOT”).
I don’t know what other lesbian’s experiences of having relationships with men are like, but mine felt something like getting continuously pricked by a needle carving out an invisible tattoo that shouted the words “THIS FEELS HORRIBLE”, inaudibly. I know that makes little sense, but neither did the feeling, to me, at the time, so I covered it over by muttering “But he’s a really nice guy” to myself, about 200 times a day (on reflection, having to repeat “But they’re really nice” 200 times a day to yourself is NEVER a good sign in a relationship. I digress).
So I stayed with him for 4 years and I was irritable and I was moody and I did a lot of sleeping in the day for hours and hours and hours, and one day he told me that, if I was a fruit, I would be a pineapple, because I was always so god damn prickly.
Thinking about it now still makes me smile. Because we can’t really hide who we are, even if we are also hiding it from ourselves. The truth of who I am was always there, somewhere, even though I tried really, really hard to hide it behind the personality I created for myself, who had Carrie Bradshaw’s obsession with dating (men), Bridget Jones’ obsession with writing (about men) and Caitlin Moran’s teenage obsession with having sex (with men). You’d think that it would have looked like I was overcompensating, but it worked.
I chose ‘Chronicles’ to be part of my title because the journey to being honest about who we are is big and important and deserves to sound like you are a character in Narnia who makes friends with a lion. It’s a process that, for me at least, was hard and often invisible, but the pay offs have been huge, and I say that even as someone who is unable to work due to PTSD, whose aim for this week is to manage to go to a sewing class.
That, and my experience of being in the closet would have been A LOT better if there had been a secret back entrance that OPENED ONTO A WINTER WONDERLAND WHERE JAMES MACAVOY IS A FAUN.
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