Felix Ever After

by Kacen Callender

“I want to be in love. I’ve never, you know—felt the kind of passion great artists talk about. I want that. I want to feel that level of intensity. Not everyone wants love. I get that, you know? But me—I want to fall in love and be broken up with and get pissed and grieve and fall in love all over again. I’ve never felt any of that. I’ve just been doing the same shit. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.”

“The shows aren’t making people gay,” Austin says. “They’re just making people realize it’s even . . . I don’t know, a possibility. It’s like we’re all brainwashed from the time we’re babies to think that we have to be straight.”

And it really was as easy as that. It took a second to get out of the habit, but I eventually stopped worrying about the question and just went with the cycles—and as I stopped worrying about it, I started to notice different things about the people I’m attracted to, and the sorts of things that connect them. Confidence. A flame inside of them almost, like they know exactly who they are, and no one’s ever going to be able to tell them otherwise.

“Second of all,” he says, “it doesn’t matter what they think. It only matters what you think. Do you think you’re worthy of respect and love?”

If I fall in love again, it’ll be with a woman who loves me also—not someone who I have to convince to love me. It’s easier, I think, to love someone you know won’t love you—to chase them, knowing they won’t feel the same way—than to love someone who might love you back. To risk loving each other and losing it all.”

loved her. Still do. Probably always will. But it took me a little longer to figure out that just because I love her, doesn’t mean it’s a good kind of love. It can be easier, sometimes, to choose to love someone you know won’t return your feelings. At least you know how that will end.

It’s the real, loving relationships that can be the scariest.”

“We loved each other so much, but we weren’t made to be in a relationship. And just because you love one, doesn’t mean you can’t love another.

It’s almost like I was looking for the pain and the hurt, because it was easier to live with the idea that, even though I want love, I’m not the kind of person who deserves to be loved.

Once I start screaming, I can’t stop. I scream so hard my throat feels raw and my heart pounds. I’m screaming with joy. I’m screaming with pain. I’m screaming with the awe that I’m here, that we’re all here, and that we’re here because of the people before us, the people who couldn’t be here, and I’m screaming for myself, too.