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FOR I HAD SINNED

"As every other person."

This was a default answer to a question I had been asked countless times in high school: How do you see B? But now i was sitting with her beside me in the counsellor's office, answering a different question: What does she make you feel?

The truth is I felt fleeting things, twisted, raw, primitive, soul snatching, heart squeezing, breathtaking, nail biting, toe curling things. I felt world ending, cupid inspired, sex driven, hot rising things for this one woman but i was not ready to say it out loud, I was not ready to hear it bounce from my lips to my ears. I could not bring myself to tell anyone else that every breathe this beautiful human drew was another swell of love within me. I was not prepared to be dumbfounded by the very thought of confessing that this one human held together my very sanity. I was not ready to feel the pangs of emotion that came with such utterance of vulnerability. I was not fit for the battle that lay within a simple answer, because I knew this type of love would have to be fought for, slain for, walked through hell for. 

So i generated another answer, "Nothing more than friendship."
And just like that, the seven other adults in the room each let out the breathes they had been holding simultaneously.

I had strayed yet again. I had been suspected of the great outrageous sin of loving anything except a man, by the definition of my society. I had dared to be seen as something else rather than a girl in high school with very heteronormative tendancies. I had dared to walk from under the shadow of a masculine figure. I had refused to swoon over countless love letters from aspiring Romeos begging to resurrect the Juliet they felt was theirs for the wooing. I had stood beside my B, defending, applauding, nursing, loving, encouraging, when society would have had me supporting, submitting, assuring and pampering a man. There was no sin to confess. B made me feel, alive.

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