can i please come out to you?

...finally

Two weeks ago, I posted about my dad showing up at a Hands Off rally in rural Montana, and how much this meant to me. I wrote this post in a flood of feeling on a Saturday afternoon. I didn’t edit it — I posted it just because I needed to beat my heart somewhere beyond my couch.

When my note went Substack viral, earning 16k likes and hundreds of comments in a few days, several things happened. I wept reading the stories of other readers, some who shared my experience, others who longed to do so. So many strangers told me they saw me, they loved me, they were rooting for me.

I received my first ever hateful comment, witnessed the immediate flocking of others to defend my words against his. Over and over again, people spoke to the hope my story brought them.

And I wanted to give them more of it! My god, I love giving people hope — almost as much as I love cats. I send out LITTLE HOPES when I can here. I have a proclivity for seeking and finding ordinary kindnesses in the lived world, and I joy in spotlighting these for my people.

So I came up with a madcap plan. I was going to change my Substack entirely — rename it, archive all of my old posts. MDQ 2.0 would be only about hope. That’s what I would dish up. Hope upon hope upon hope, until the world was full of it, and even then, I’d dish up more. I would be the Hope Harbinger for the rest of my days, and I would give everything to fulfilling this role perfectly.

I would also respond to every single comment I received on that viral post, with care and intention, because that is the person I am.

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I glutted myself on this vision for a few days. But I hesitated. Something didn’t feel quite right. I thought about the three words I love so much: my and dear and queer. I thought about the fact that it’s my queerness that’s linked to my hope, not the other way around.

I noticed the fact that every time I opened my note to respond to folks’ generous comments, something in me broke. I could barely type a word, hardly like a comment. I disappeared from Substack for a week, and then another.

I realized that I have this tendency. Something I say lands with someone — or, say, 16,000 people — and, like an adorable trained cat, I assume this means that I must say more of that thing. Do that kind of back flip. Be more. Drop what I’ve been doing, and pick up that pen.

In other words, I am so ready to change to suit the room’s mood. I am poised to pivot to what I assume is the world’s appetite, and often at the cost of vital, burgeoning parts of myself that — like ghosted lovers — keep coming around, begging me quietly to tell them why the hell I keep giving up on them. Can’t I just look their way for a second, and give them a chance?

I’ve done this, I’m afraid, for most of my adult life.

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In therapy last week, we talked about my deep longing to feel seen by others, how this longing often twists itself into a longing to make others feel seen — a genuine desire, truly, but unhealthy in what it does on the backend. In my clamor to create safety for others, I do a cute lil magic trick and make it harder for people to see who exactly is building that cozy couch they’re currently sipping iced tea upon — who is reassuring them that they are welcome here.

If I do allow myself to be visible, it’s only once I’ve chameleoned my way into what I presume is a pleasing shape to all. It’s not bald dishonesty, because often that pleasing shape is merely one hugely amplified part of me. But it’s still, in its own way, a form of inauthenticity.

My task now becomes this — what does it look like for me to create seenness in the world in the stories I tell, the relationships I sustain, while also being visible myself? I mean visible. Middle of the living room carpet kind of visible. Definitely not failing this eye exam kind of seen. And, for fuck’s sake, not changing my entire wardrobe, dialect, and line of sight before stepping up to the mic.

I honestly don’t know. But this post is my first step toward answering that question.

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I’m not going to change my Substack. I’m not going to let go of My Dear Queer. I feel like what I write may evolve, and how I write it (notice, for instance, that this is typed, not handwritten, because as much as I love the intimacy of handwriting, it’s been taking too much time, and I am learning to calibrate effort and cost in my busy life as a multidimensional creative).

But this is going to change — I want to come out to you. I want you to know who I am. I want honesty to be the core of what I share with you. Hope can be a delicious byproduct of that, whenever it wants. But it will not be the aim. Or rather, My Dear Queer will not be a product of its environment, perceived outside need, or the zeitgeist’s whims.

I’ve always said that I speak the truth, and that remains true. This time, though, I am committed to speaking my truth, and being full about it. No appetizers here, friends, just ample meals, which will probably be vulnerable, and which will always reference cats.

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So, can I come out to you? Are you cozy on your couch and ready to listen?

I realize there’s so little you may know about me. Here’s a taste (for now):

• 🏳️‍🌈 I am proudly queer and genderqueer, and this may be my favorite thing about me. As a dear friend named recently, queerness is more than my sexuality and my gender identity. It informs my way of life, how I see the world, and my core values. My pronouns are they/she, with a preference for they — thank you for asking! What are yours?

• 📓 I am a fiction writer first and foremost. I’m also a produced playwright. But the first thing I ever wrote was a short story (at age five) — fiction will always be my first love. I am working on a short story collection at the moment, and it’s my goal to realize my childhood dream of publishing a book within the next couple of years. (So, hi, agents, wanna work with me? Asking for a friend.)

• 🪿 I enjoy silliness, disruption, and irreverence. I have an abiding obsession for Drag Race. I dabble in stand-up comedy. I live for things that are absurd and transcend or challenge convention. I often have a strong and propulsive desire in conventional public settings — airplanes, public transit, lectures — to do something ludicrous and startling, like taking off all of my clothes, standing on my chair and yelling Lady Gaga lyrics badly, or meowing randomly. Why? Because.

• 🌲 I talk to trees. I mean, yeah, don’t you? Seriously, though. The forests speak to me. And I listen. My soul comes alive in the understory.

• 💪🏻 I am a survivor. While I do not want survivorship to be the central piece of my identity — for a long time it was, and I felt like it had to be — it informs my activism, my art, and my passion for speaking truth to power, and so to know it exists is to know me. I’ve survived multiple forms of gender-based violence (GBV) and have spoken publicly about these in a podcast, a recent documentary, and an award-winning personal essay. I now proudly work for an organization working to end GBV.

• ❤️‍🩹 I am committed to repairing my nervous system. Given the traumas I’ve survived, my chronic PTSD, and my strong belief that personal healing aids the collective, I spend a lot of my time outside of work and writing engaging in healing modalities (talk therapy, cranial sacral therapy, meditation, yoga, plant medicines, etc.). I am, quite literally, very busy healing these days, and I’m so damn proud of the work I’m doing, even if it’s meant needing more recovery time and less social interaction. (So if I don’t respond to you right away, this is probably the reason — please do not take it personally.) I can’t wait to share more of my regulated, healed self with you!

• 💌 I love physical letters. I’d probably respond to your comment, email, or text faster if it were snail mail. I’ve saved every letter I’ve ever received. So if you become my pen pal, I’ll treat that relationship very seriously. And hot damn, do I have a gorgeous stationary collection.

• 🫶 I believe in tenderness. Truly. I think the way we rise in this world has a lot to do with our ability to be tender — with ourselves, the earth, the collective. I bring tenderness to all that I do. It’s wrapped up in my kindness, generosity, and preference for soft things. Call me a tender heart. I’ll answer.

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If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’m relieved and hopeful to have come out to you in this way. I’m excited to continue the process — I hope you’ll stay with me through My Dear Queer’s ongoing evolution.

As always, MDQ is donation-based. So if my words resonated with you in any way — or moved your own dear heart — please consider filling my tip jar. I always say yes to lesbian lattes, and I donate 10% of every month’s proceedings to The Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline.

Thanks for being here, and for seeing me — yep, standing here in the middle of the living room carpet, giving you a 360-degree twirl. (Sorry not sorry for the cat hair now floating in the air, and of course I haven’t vacuumed in a week or two, and of course that word, vacuum, is one I’ll never know how to spell without the help of technology.)

xo,

Bardette ✨ (Who is Bardette? Stick around. I’ll introduce her in future posts.)