The following contains spoilers for Our Flag Means Death. And also profanity. (But don’t worry, it’s tasteful.)
The last time I felt this way about something, I was 13, still yet to be disillusioned by so much in the world. I wrote fanfictions charged by electric fingertip typing on my mother’s home computer, I cursed at the plot twists during binge watches and belted along with theme songs that had no words and pored over blogs and traced my favorite fanart into a notebook.
I remember the day I left that version of myself behind.
I remember when I gave up.
The drizzly rain accompanied soft morning light in the bathroom as I uncapped a fresh black permanent marker and scribbled tally marks all over my arms and legs and face1, grinning in the mirror as I donned my favorite shirt with the dark blue phone box. It was a declaration of my love for something, this indescribable feeling rooted deep in my soul that came with a story having intrinsic value in my life; a story that had meaning to my personhood. And for some odd reason, a British show about an alien time traveler and his companion was that story.
My mom drove me to school and didn’t say a word (she may not have understood but she never discouraged me). I didn’t even think to be concerned about my classmates until I walked through the double doors. The tally marks suddenly felt like magnets, drawing all eyes to me and my love - now a bitter, shameful thing. I saw their snickers when I stepped into the hallway, you know - middle schoolers are not subtle, nor are they kind. I tried to explain but their looks stayed confused. I tried to smile through it but the sideways glances stung on impact.
I walked into the bathroom and did not leave until my skin had been scrubbed raw, clean of any marks or stains.
Nobody really understood my love - the way I loved, the kind of people I loved, the things I loved.
I exhaled a certain kind of love into the world that the world, I suppose, was not ready for. I opened my eyes and witnessed the breadth of the breath and the way it spread others away around me, an enclosed sphere of my own making wrapped around me, isolating me.
I was scared.
God, I was fucking terrified.
I took my love online to the ever-growing Internet and its clubhouses of fandom, and though I found a mirror there reflecting my affection, nobody ever dared show me that my love was heard. I never really saw my love in a way that was meaningful2.
So I learned that my love did not deserve to be seen.
I grasped at the tendrils of that wispy cold morning breath. It clung like dewdrops to my fingers as I shoved it behind a door, hiding it from the light of day. Forcing myself to forget.
I liked normal things, I liked boys3, I liked dresses4 and I liked makeup and I liked my long hair (I’m so glad I grew it out) and I liked pop music and I liked gossiping at the lunch table and I liked normal things, those are normal things, right? normal normal normal normal
It ate away at me. I wasn’t blind to that, I knew it was an acid burning through my calloused flesh, but that deep bellyaching pain became familiar. A comfort even, the burn of my lungs as I held my breath was what I knew. It marked fitting in, it marked being correct.
I did not know - didn’t believe - that it was possible to let the breath out again. I loved things quietly with bated, stilted wheezes - abashedly embarrassed and qualifying my passions. I anticipated judgment before it could be laid upon me, I picked it out for them and laid it bare. I needed them to know I wasn’t stupid or naive.
I know but I know but I know but
But
That short, three-lettered bastard, holding its damn breath and waiting for the slap of judgment. Not daring to inhale or exhale. Frozen, locked in stillness.
Until
The first hint of an inhale came with a warm laptop fan blowing on my legs while the window invited in the summer breeze and on the screen in front of me, a girl grabbed another girl’s hand and they blushed5 and I sobbed.
It was one of the (quiet) (embarrassing) things I liked and in that moment my shaking hand grazed the spacebar to pause it and the blue-light screen lit my face as I wept openly into my pillow, loud heaves rippling out of me in (muffled) exhales because somehow, in some way I was seen.
I was seeing me.
I caught tears in my palm where ghosts of bitter dewdrops lay dormant and the child who never saw, was never seen... that child began to awaken.
I did not quite yet allow myself to water the seed of hope inside me. I was too old and mature for that and well, when you’re a grown up and paying rent and bills and going to work and doctor’s appointments and saving for surgery, you’re too busy to become invested and isn’t that a little cringe anyway? (They always told me it was.)
I quietly browsed timelines and threads and liked (never retweeted) and screenshotted (but never shared). I kept it to myself, behind the door.
And somewhere in the placid monotony of that daily routine, between work shifts and hours bent over my tablet doing client work, I passively flicked on a chummy tv show, a silly pirate comedy6 with Taika Waititi, a name I knew and loved, alongside a mishmash cast. It was unassuming in its initial presentation - it would be a good laugh with its intriguing premise, something good to have on in the background. I opened my laptop at the end of one of my long work days while folding laundry and glanced over when suddenly-
The door was open. A tornado of breaths knocked it off its hinges and tore through the locks I had accrued over the years and without even thinking for a goddamn minute, I, too, exhaled my love into the air and it was there. It was there? It was there!
I was there.
I was wanted.
My love was desired and deserved and held and nurtured and shared and suddenly my breath of love did not push people away…it invited them in. The breath was someone else’s, they were sharing it with me, and it preceded an unapologetic declaration out loud, one that I hadn’t known was possible to hear, one that I didn’t know I needed. And we all needed it, didn’t we? This show was written for us, about us, with us.
I’ve been explaining to people that I feel like a kid again. Staying up late and scrolling through mood boards and edits and writing fanfiction (I never thought I would be writing fanfiction again). I am making art and writing essays and yelling at friends to watch it and digging for behind-the-scenes and filling my brain with as much of it as I can. I am teeming with irrefutable love.
And I am beginning to realize the true value of all of that…the true power that comes with this anchored, reaching, blooming, explosive love.
I used to think that my love was my weakness. I was the picture perfect child and my Achilles heel was my love in its queer and wondrous ways. I’m still learning and trying to accept that it’s not, but today, I have been shown that my power is my love and my love is not lonely. My love is as potent as the oxygen in my lungs, and I will no longer be sorry for that. My breath billows with thousands of others into cumulonimbus clouds precipitating a glorious rain that is washing away my hesitation and drenching me in the unmistakable embrace of pure, unadulterated love. Nothing more, nothing less. No moral value or social capital, just my love. In front of me. Emotional and raw and in that, ever steady. My love is not wrong or bad or unfounded or silly or unreachable. It has been handed to me gently and tenderly and unapologetically and it is beautiful.
So, incredibly beautiful.
We are the beholders and we are the beauty.
So many of us, loving this now, sharing our love and seeing this beauty, we came from home and places and a world where we were taught that we are deserving of not but resounding silence. Does everyone involved know the true, intrinsic, irrefutable value that their vision holds? It’s not simply that the story is the love we need - their love is the love we need. Waititi, Jenkins, Darby, Ortiz, Schutte, Foad, they are reading and seeing and shouting it, they are holding our hands and showing us the light of day and saying
We deserved it all along.
And no, I cannot sit here today and tell you that my love has fully healed; that would be facetious, and I am not writing this to overly romanticize myself. My existence is debated in courthouses and banned in schools and my voice is not always respected. I still hurt when I look at my chest and the shallow savings for a far-off surgery, I haven’t hugged all the past versions of myself I am still learning to see,
I’m still aware of the exact weight of my every breath.
Some part of me still instinctually gets anxious, nervous when I think about what it all must look like, this love…when I realize it’s consuming my brain like only one thing had years before with tally marks on my arms and I’m probably talking too loud and too much and I’m telling everyone to watch it and isn’t that what they called cringe when I was a kid but
But
I don’t care
I don’t fucking care.
There was a wound there, it has scarred and healed over. Still visible, ragged and marred with the ghost of past pains. I thought it was gnarled and ugly and shameful and hideous but I was wrong. I have exposed it once again, gentle hands pulling back the fabric and I feel the warmth of the sunshine on that spot deep within me. It aches in a way that I have yet to put adequate words to, it changes and ripples with a multitude of sensations and it’s confusing and wonderful and scary and so many things…
But somewhere in there, breathing deeply for the first time in years, is a 13-year-old waiting to love.
The annual Doctor Who Day was celebrated by some fans covering themselves in tally marks, commemorating a monster on the show called The Silence, whose power is being forgotten anytime someone looks away from them. Characters keep track of how many they’ve seen by drawing tally marks on their arms. The homage to the show was meant to express fandom and attract fellow Whovians.
Shows like BBC’s Sherlock relentlessly teased a burgeoning romance between Sherlock and John, an insanely popular couple shipped in online communities by primarily young queer fans. The efforts were not only frequent, but spearheaded by showrunners Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, only for nothing to ever come of it in the show’s canon. Not only this, but to many of the fans, several actions displayed by Moffat and Gatiss mocked this display by fans. This was a frequent pattern of queerbaiting executed by other large connected fandoms like Supernatural and Doctor Who.
Also see: compulsory heterosexuality. (i.e., I am very much not attracted to men) (i.e., I’m gay)
Spoiler alert: this too was not true. I am very much not a dress-wearing girl (i.e., not a girl at all, in fact) (i.e., I’m trans/non-binary)
The Owl House, Season 2 Episode 8, Disney, 2020-
Our Flag Means Death, HBO Max 2022-