I came out as genderqueer, polyamorous, and pansexual to my friends on Facebook yesterday. Then I realized I never explicitely came out to the 40ish of you. Instead, I have slowly sprinkled it throughout my tweets and constant profile changes over the last 12 months. As @gesa says: I have been “if not ‘out’, then at least ‘un-closeted’” with you.

You have been my safe place.

For the last 12 months, my head has been a rather odd space. Even without the rockiness of adolescence to complicate my thoughts, the complexities of the shifts in my understanding of myself—engaging with my ethnicity, becoming polyamorous, to understanding my gender, and my sexuality have put me in new headspaces. And it feels weird doing this at 30 rather than at 18 or 20. At times it feels like a puppet show, people my age are supposed to be settled in these things, as if that level of self-exploration is meant to only happen earlier because our core personality is suppose to be settled by 25. Yet here I am with what—prima facie—seem like huge changes. But I don’t think my core has changed at all. Like early and later Wittgenstein, I see the changes of the last year as rearticulations of my understanding of myself and my relationship to the world. I have not changed, it is the story I tell myself about myself that changed.

I don’t know how closely y’all have been paying attention, but I can not express in words the depth of how much I’ve appreciated the love, non-judgement, and encouragement you’ve all shown me. From my deepest and truest heart: thank you.

I still have far to go: I am still cloudy over my relationship to my heritage. Have much to explore with the new hues of my gender and chromas of my sexuality and kinks. My relationship with my family is now tremendously complicated, the thought of coming out to them feels just as complicated at 30 as it might have be at 25. My mind is filled with new worlds I am only starting to discover and that is messy, scary, invogorating, ridiculous, and beautiful.

I am often seen as a private person, but I tend to be very open to those whom I feel safe with. And even though I know most of you only through Twitter, you are the people with whom I feel safest. I will make you all tea when we meet in squishyspace.

Basically, I’ve unintentionally drafted you into becoming the guardians of my heart. (Not actually…but kinda.)

Sorry, not sorry.

Truly, with all my love,
Bernard ❤️