I’ve never loved labels. Not because they’re useless, but because they can flatten a person in seconds. Musician. Designer. Strategist. Artist. All true. None of them the whole picture.
Underneath all of that, I’ve always had the feeling of being slightly out of step. Not dramatically. Just enough to notice. Before I had language, I had that feeling.
At school, I was called “gay boy” before I’d really worked it out for myself. I wasn’t doing anything. Just existing in a way that didn’t quite fit the room. It made me self-conscious in ways I couldn’t explain yet. I learned quickly that whatever this was, it wasn’t something to show.
No one in my family talked about being gay. I didn’t have a reference point for what it might mean to say it out loud. So I didn’t. I folded it inward. Carried a kind of quiet shame I didn’t choose, but absorbed.
I still find it strange that queer people are expected to “come out,” as if our existence needs a formal announcement. Most people just get to be.
Long before I spoke about any of this, I was making things. Songs. Music. Sounds that felt like somewhere to put the feelings I didn’t have language for yet. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing at the time. I just knew that when I was making something, I could be more honest than I knew how to be in conversation. Sensitive. Intense. Romantic. A bit too much for some rooms. Exactly right in that one. Music became a place where nothing about me needed explaining.
Lately, I’ve also been looking at other threads. The way I notice everything. The way noise can overwhelm me but beauty can undo me just as easily. The intensity. The focus. The need for both structure and freedom. I’ve never been formally assessed, but I’ve wondered about neurodiversity. Some pieces of myself make more sense when I look through that lens. Not as a label to cling to. Just as context.
Being gay isn’t the loudest thing about me. But I know it’s there, woven through everything. In the way I care about people feeling seen. In the softness I value. In the pull towards emotional clarity. In the refuge I find in beauty and art and stillness. It’s a quiet root. You don’t always see the roots of something. But they’re often the reason it stands at all.
You don’t have to lead with every part of yourself. But you don’t have to pretend they’re not there either. The things that shape us don’t always take centre stage. Sometimes they’re just present in the room, influencing everything without asking for attention.
There are things I wish I could say to the version of me who was younger and carrying all of this without words. Maybe this is for him. Maybe it’s for someone else, too.
Dear you,
I know you feel different, even if you can’t explain how.
You’re right. You are. But not in the way you fear.
Nothing about you is a mistake.
The sensitivity. The softness. The intensity. The way you feel things all the way through. One day, those will be the exact tools you use to make sense of the world... for yourself, and for other people.
You don’t have to solve yourself right now.
You’re not behind. You’re not wrong.
You’re just early in the story.
Love,
You.. later.