There’s a quote I come back to often by Fiona Apple.

She writes, “When I was a kid—10, 11, 12, 13—the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people, to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody. And back then, a thought would go through my head almost constantly: “There’s never gonna be a room someplace where there’s a group of people sitting around, having fun, hanging out, where one of them goes, ‘You know what would be great? We should call Fiona. Yeah, that would be good.’ That’ll never happen. There’s nothing interesting about me.” I just felt like I was a sad little boring thing.”

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The last time I remember having a true “best friend” was in 3rd grade, and her name was Caelyn. When she and I first met, I thought she was a boy. In my child brain, I thought short hair = boy, and the next day she came to school wearing a skirt to prove to me the opposite. From that day on, she and I were best friends. She only lived a few blocks away from me, and I’d sleep over at her house all the time. We’d listen to nightcore, play Roblox, and talk about Undertale while never having played it.

We are no longer best friends. By 4th grade, I’d switched schools, and it was harder to keep in contact with her when we didn’t have phones or iPads. Then, she moved away. To Nebraska? Or Ohio? I’m unsure. While I’ve made many attempts to find her on the internet, I’ve had no luck.

So from then on, I can’t say I’ve made any best friends. The one girl you love the most, more than anyone else. Your “ultimate duo”. As a result of this, I’ve always felt like I was missing a part of girlhood.

Navigating middle school, then high school, then college, I’ve always felt like I was the “floater friend”. The friend who is “just not that close” despite my longing to be more. Social media obviously hasn’t helped this either. Seeing all my friends post about “their person” or watching a group of people you deemed to be close hang out without you.

I won’t say I was alone, but I will say that I was lonely, and I did wonder. Was I doing friendship wrong? Why am I the least liked among my friends? Maybe I was too much, or too little, or simply just forgettable. Was I not funny enough? Was there something that people liked about me but not enough to love?

Not having a best friend had a huge part to play in my self-esteem. I didn’t feel like I was wanted, and I tried my best to change. I could be trustworthy, someone to talk to, someone to laugh with. I could be whatever you needed me to be then and there at any time.

This meant that I had to become good at floating. I could fit into any group, make conversation, and enter a room without people making space for me. I was comfortable knowing that I could belong anywhere, but for some reason I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. As quickly as I entered a group, I could leave it, and no one would bat an eye. I wasn’t looking for popularity, and I didn’t need everyone to like me; I just wanted one person to think about me without being reminded.

Entering college, I didn’t learn to stop floating, but it just reinforced how good I became at it. I have made friends, but none of the connections were substantial. My college “trio” quickly became a “duo,” with me being the one left out. What went from all three of us in class together and getting Froyo after quickly turned into them partying together and posting without me.

Leaving high school, I thought college would be different, as I was immediately affirmed otherwise. I spent late nights crying to my girlfriend about having no friends, while she attempted to comfort me and make me feel wanted.

Being a “best friend” to me felt like you’d been chosen. It was proof that you were important to someone. When I couldn’t be someone’s person, I took it as evidence that something was missing in me and I needed to improve.

Recently, I’ve been trying to separate myself from this mindset. Is being a best friend a title you really have to earn? Do you need to be the funniest or most interesting? Or do you just need to find each other at the right time and choose to stick? Is being chosen really a measure of what you’re worth?

Of course, I still think about Caelyn, my one best friend. Not because I want our 3rd grade Roblox gameplays or our nightcore karaoke sessions, but because she was the last person I never had to wonder about. I didn’t have to wonder if she liked me as much as I liked her. We were just best friends.

All these years maybe that’s what I’ve really been lacking in life, not particularly a best friend, but that feeling of certainty that comes with one, the certainty I am still chasing. I’m waiting for the room Fiona talked about where maybe someone will think “Let’s call Serenity,” and I don’t have to be that “sad little thing”. Maybe someone will. But for now, I’m trying to believe that I’m worthy whether or not they invite me.

I was 19 years old when I started to feel guilty for loving women. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been attracted to women. Butch, Femme, Stud, Masc, Stem, Fem, I’ve liked them all. I’ve even been in the stereotypical position of liking your best friend AND dating her.

That being said, I can’t remember facing any true adversity for liking women. I was raised in Jersey City, one of the most diverse cities in the country, and to me, everyone is so different but also so very queer.

Growing up, I was raised Pentecostal, and of course I went to church, but only ever so often. New Year’s, Christmas, Easter, just the big ones. But I also can’t remember a church service I ever managed to stay awake for despite the constant singing, clapping, and chanting.

I can’t remember ever being called a slur and fearing that my parents wouldn’t accept me, but the media I was consuming always said otherwise, and it was not something I could truly relate to, and don’t get me wrong, I love “Fable” by Gigi Perez, but even songs like that felt like an experience that was not my own. I knew homophobia existed, of course, but I can’t say that was my story. It wasn’t really until I started dating my now-girlfriend that I truly felt a reverence for God and a very real fear of homophobia.

Before I started dating her, being gay had never felt like something I needed to be afraid of. I knew I liked women, and women liked me, and that was the end of the conversation.

My girlfriend is Muslim and was raised by two very homophobic parents. This past year has been full of laughs, butterflies, and overall bliss, but it has also been filled with a lot of sneaking, hiding, and lying.

For the first time, religion wasn’t just something I partook in at Easter or Christmas, but it became a big part of my relationship and life as a whole.

For my girlfriend, being surrounded by hatred and pure disgust surrounding queerness and being lesbian, sometimes I could see how it affected her. She’d talk about wishing we weren’t both girls, she’d talk about God, and she’d talk about the guilt she felt for loving me. I knew where it came from and I knew why she felt that way, but at the time, over these months, I didn’t realize how it started to affect me too.

I’d wake up in the night from a dream (or nightmare) where her parents discovered we were dating and split us up. I began to have more dreams about being exposed to the world and being shamed for who I was.

Going outside, I became more cautious of people seeing us together. I was more aware of when we’d hold hands and when we’d kiss; I felt like everyone’s eyes were on us. When a car would ride past, I’d have thoughts about “What if her parents drove by?” or on the train I’d think “What if we see someone she knows?”

I remember this one particular time on the train, I could see her emotions switch. I hadn’t noticed why or what I was doing, but when we spoke later, she told me I was being too touchy and affectionate. Which was not something good to hear, but I can also say I understood why she felt that way. So, from then on, her guilt was something I started to anticipate before she expressed it to me.

At one point, I’d kneel on the side of the bed in the dorm and pray for God to forgive me, to overlook this one flaw of mine, despite rarely praying and never having felt this way before. I started to question: “Am I going to Hell?” “Have I upset God?” I rarely thought about it before. I wasn’t suddenly devoted, but I could feel myself becoming more religious and praying for salvation and looking for reassurance that I wasn’t beyond forgiving. I wanted to cling to anything that could help me make sense of what I was feeling at that point.

I couldn’t figure out why I had never felt guilty before. I liked women before her, and I never felt like I had to answer to anyone for it either. But the truth was that hearing someone I loved talk about us with such shame and guilt, I started to share that shame with her.

I don’t blame her at all. If I could pinpoint exactly what I’m feeling, I would say I feel sad for her. I feel sad that she inherited this guilt from her parents, but I’m also sad that loving me causes her to feel like she needs to reconcile with God.

You don’t realize how loving someone can cause you to drown in them and drown in their feelings. You start carrying their fear for them.

So that was the beginning of my guilt. It didn’t come from parental rejection or hate crimes or even being shunned at church. It came from me loving someone who is afraid to love herself, and that’s what makes navigating it so difficult. It was new to me, something I’d picked up along the way, and I carried it to sleep at night, when I woke up in the morning, when I held her hand, when we shared a kiss, and when she laid me down.