For most of my life, I always felt that something was missing. Whether it was love in friendships or romantic relationships, wanting love in my family, or desperately wanting to love myself, I wanted that love. As I grow more in-tune with my emotions and feelings, and discovering this term in GWS 203, I find different ways to achieve peace, love, and the erotic. Things that fulfill my desires so that I can be a happy queer person and go against everyone that wants people like me gone.

Learning about the erotic in Audre Lorde's The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, I found eroticism in the things I enjoy like art, being with my friends, and being with my loving boyfriend. It fulfills a part of my desire and as the years go by, I hope to no longer have the desire to be wanted by people who do not accept me for who I am.

Being queer and trans and non-binary comes with an entire lifetime of yearning in only two decades of my life. Being with my boyfriend, no matter how feminine or masculine I look, no matter if I have nails (like the picture above) or if my nails are bare, I know that he will always see me as me, and love me the same. My negative experiences help me value and cherish all of the love I receive from him and my other queer friends as I know our queer love will last a lifetime.

I achieve the erotic when I am surrounded by people I feel safe and loved by. I achieve the erotic when I get to be my most authentic trans self around my partner. I achieve the erotic when I put on the most extravagant makeup and look like the gayest person in the room.

Without realizing, all of this is fulfilling my queer desires. Expressing my queerness releases parts of my sadness and longing for better things. I express myself in poems and collages (like the background picture of this padlet), and it sets me free. Knowing that I am not the only one who feels this way, and that I get to choose who my true family is, sets me free. I have learned that through these small moments and surrounding myself with people who love me, I get to feel genuine joy, even if I am unable to fully understand it. Although the world is harsh, I am able to bring tenderness and love to my own heart, and that is achieving the erotic.

My existence is the exact contradiction to what my culture values and deems worthy and "right". As I look deeper into my identity, who I was, and who I could possibly be, I slowly detach myself from these expectations and set myself free.

Images like the one above shows me that there are people out there that show their identity in unconventional and queer ways that show their own sense of pride of their identity and culture.

As I try to learn more about indigenous culture in Mexico, detach myself from the deep colonialism and nationalism I grew up with, it helps me feel more connected to myself. It releases me from the fear of rejection and the harmful binary that continues to hurt everyone, as I know that somewhere in my ancestry, someone would be proud of me.

After years of constant struggle with anxiety and ADHD, finally knowing that a timeline society deems universal is not universal at all. I am physically and mentally unable to progress the way society thinks I should. But, as long as I sit with this reality, the more I come to accept it.

My senior year of high school and my freshman year of college were bad! I was forcing myself to function the way my body and brain did not want to and I was burnt out for those two years (still am). I am now learning to take school slow, even if it takes a while to graduate. Because I love to learn, I love to rest, and I should be able to do both just because I can and I need to. I have the rest of my life to start my dream career and I will always keep trying.