I don’t know what it is today but I’m feeling very happily queer. Fiercely queer, if you will. Let’s just call it ‘quierce.’ Yeah. That’ll do.

Normally I’m pretty low-key. Central Texas is not the most accommodating, accepting place and I have the misfortune to work for a company that isn’t widely regarded for its progressive outlook and open acceptance of people from all over the rainbow, feel me?

Today I am just unapologetically queer. Wait, my bad. Quierce. Nothing to be done for it.

I think the older I get the less I care what people think about me. I spent most of my life trying to blend in and be like everyone else so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself. Now, as I’m growing SO old (yeah, that’s sarcasm – I’m not THAT old), I realize it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about me. Trying to blend in with the masses has only brought me discontent and unhappiness. Fuck blending.

I’m not stupid. I know that dressing the way I dress, wearing my hair differently, all the things I do that scream ‘gender non-conformist’ could very well get me beaten the hell up on a rural back street somewhere. Today, though, and on an increasingly large number of days as I look back on the last few years of my life, the risk is worth the reward.

What reward?

The reward of being myself. The reward of looking in the mirror and actually LIKING what I see, even if ninety-nine percent of the world disagrees. The reward of knowing I went into my day lying about nothing, hiding nothing, being the person I wanted to be from the second I rolled out of bed to the second I collapsed back into it.

That’s reward enough for me. So I’mma just go ahead an be quierce today. And probably tomorrow. And quite possibly the day after that too.

~Arin.