Thinking back to the troubled teenager I once was, there were always different stories floating around about who my father was or wasn’t. Different versions. Different explanations. Different people holding different pieces of a history I was somehow expected to understand.
And I know I wasn’t the only person in my family who struggled beneath those kinds of traumatic mind games.
When you grow up questioning where you came from, eventually those questions can turn inward:
Who am I? Where do I belong? Why wasn’t I enough for someone to stay?
Then came the military.
At nineteen, I found myself at basic training surrounded by drill sergeants who probably had no idea just how fragile the person underneath that uniform could sometimes be. Their job was to build soldiers. Break down hesitation. Create discipline. Teach us to function when everything around us became uncomfortable, exhausting, loud, or uncertain.
In strange ways, they helped build up a kid who had spent years trying to understand a world that never seemed interested in providing straight answers.
But becoming a soldier didn’t magically erase the child underneath the uniform.
That person still follows me.
There are still days when I question my worth. There are still nights when old memories knock against the walls of my mind. And as life moves forward, the circle of people I genuinely feel comfortable talking to seems incredibly small.
Watching other people seemingly move forward while feeling like I’ve been left behind in some strange state of protection creates its own kind of emptiness. You become grateful for the people protecting your heart while simultaneously wondering when you get to simply live again.
Then there’s Madison.
Good ole Madison.
A city full of intersecting lives, old relationships, new friendships, queer spaces, veterans, activists, artists, rumors, missed connections, and enough missing puzzle pieces to make you wonder whether anybody actually has the complete picture.
Somewhere along the way, false narratives surface.
Relationships become stories told by people who weren’t inside them. Attraction becomes evidence. Vulnerability becomes weakness. Having your heart on your sleeve becomes something people think they can weaponize.
And apparently being attracted to more than one gender gives some people permission to reduce your humanity to words like “hooker” or “whore.”
No.
Bisexuality is not promiscuity.
Queerness is not an invitation.
Gender fluidity is not confusion.
And somebody still navigating their relationship with gender does not owe the world a perfectly packaged identity before they deserve respect.
There is enormous complexity in existing somewhere outside the boxes people desperately want everyone to check. Not everyone questioning gender identifies as one hundred percent transgender. Not everyone experiences masculinity or femininity the same way. Some of us have spent decades navigating those waters, learning what feels authentic while refusing to manufacture certainty simply to make somebody else comfortable.
That journey deserves room to breathe.
What has been particularly difficult is discovering that discrimination does not always come from outside the LGBTQ+ community.
Sometimes it comes from inside the house.
Imagine standing among a hundred people who celebrate queer identity, only to discover that being a queer woman who served her country somehow makes you suspicious, contradictory, or less welcome.
I served because I believed this country could progress.
I believed institutions could change.
I believed people could learn.
I believed America could become something better than what previous generations inherited.
That belief does not erase the complicated history of the military, especially for LGBTQ+ service members. It doesn’t erase the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It doesn’t erase homophobia, transphobia, sexism, trauma, or the contradictions many of us carried underneath our uniforms.
Serving did not make me less queer.
Being queer did not make me less of a soldier.
Being attracted to more than one gender does not make me less capable of loyalty.
And questioning where I fall within gender does not make my identity fraudulent.
I am allowed to be complicated.
We all are.
What frightens me now is watching society flirt again with attitudes many of us thought we were slowly leaving behind. Homophobia and transphobia haven’t disappeared. Sometimes they simply change clothes, learn new vocabulary, and return pretending they’re something different.
Progress isn’t guaranteed.
That might be one of the hardest lessons adulthood has taught me.
Maybe that’s why the teenager inside me still surfaces sometimes. The kid wondering who her father really was. The young soldier standing at basic training learning how to survive another kind of uncertainty. The veteran carrying experiences most strangers will never see. The queer woman wandering around Madison trying to assemble a life from pieces that don’t always fit neatly together.
For years, I thought finding every missing piece would finally explain me.
I’m beginning to understand something different.
Maybe I don’t need every missing piece to know that I am whole.
My history can be complicated.
My gender can have nuance.
My sexuality can exist without apology.
My military service can coexist with my criticism of institutions.
My heart can remain vulnerable without belonging to everybody who reaches for it.
And my worth does not depend upon whether another person understands the road it took for me to finally recognize it.
I survived enough boxes already.
I’m not climbing into another one just because somebody else needs a label they can understand.