Ophelia After All

by Racquel Marie

When you’ve had the same friends for this many years, you forget how much work goes into your first one-on-one time with a new one.

Like, I’m not the Gordon Ramsay of roses, but I’m definitely not the Gordon-Ramsay’s-victim of roses either.

They love the daughter they know, but what if I stop being that daughter?

There are all these unspoken rules that I feel I’m still catching up on, always seven steps behind everyone else.

“But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don’t just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming.”

“I don’t want to risk everything if this isn’t real,” I whisper. “But I also don’t want to pretend like this doesn’t change things for me. Because it does.”

“You’re seventeen. You’re allowed to be a not-so-great person every once in a while.”

I don’t know when it happened and if the feeling will stay. I don’t know if there will ever come a time where I’m completely and unapologetically queer. Even now, I’m still learning and unlearning, figuring out what I want for myself and my future.