Finding the love, you need can conquer the invisible burden.

Like a lot of queer people, I was raised in a culture of compulsory heterosexuality. I had an inkling that I was not straight at a very young age.

Being raised in an evangelical Christian community meant that it wasn’t an option for me to be queer. Around the age of 17, boys started paying attention to me, and I just kind of went with it. And don’t get me wrong — I like cis men too, and I loved the attention.

But it always felt like there was this small seed buried deep inside that I was too scared to allow to germinate.

I think instinctively I knew that I needed to be fully independent to allow it to grow before germinating it, otherwise it would have irreparably ripped my life apart.

So, it stayed dormant throughout my undergraduate studies and first relationship with a lovely man. It stayed dormant until my family were no longer supporting me financially.

Only once I was ready and felt safe enough for the ground beneath me to crack open did I give it the tending that it deserved.

Some things are inevitable. No matter how painful, or what devastation will result, at some point a giant force will propel you towards yourself. Eventually I found myself on a date with a woman.

She was so beautiful, and I couldn’t believe she wanted to get to know me. We had a brief tryst, and I knew that although she wasn’t the person I would be starting a relationship with, something felt right and safe about seeing other queer people.

Once the seed had germinated, it needed careful tending. My chosen family were so supportive in helping me navigate my first relationships. My birth family too, for the most part.

One family member who is incredibly important to me struggled to reconcile their love for me with their religion.

This was extremely painful because I had already spent a lifetime repressed. I wanted and deserved unconditional love and didn’t immediately feel it.

It feels like there is often an invisible burden that queer people carry when it comes to their families.

The need to excessively explain and justify themselves, to demonstrate that what they are doing is good for them, healthy and right … or, conversely, navigating “don’t ask, don’t tell” expectations from family, which can be just as painful.

Sometimes the joy of queerness, the pride and love, feels like too much to contain within the boundaries of your body. It just bursts out of you.

You want your family to fully witness and share in your joy, and often they just can’t. Or won’t let themselves. And that sucks.

After a few years of exploring queer relationships, I met the human I now call my wife. We called each other wife from pretty much day one. I often say that she has loved me into loving myself.

She has helped me to see that the treatment I have been accepting in life is not the treatment I deserve.

I dream of a day when the love I experience with my wife is possible for all humans, not just the heterosexual ones.

I dream of a day where the love I experience with my wife is possible for all humans, not just the heterosexual ones. We laugh together every day. We care for each other.

We explore and experiment and create art together. We annoy each other. We challenge each other to be better. We don’t shy away from the fullness of our humanity.

We fully see each other, even when it’s difficult to be seen. Life with her is simultaneously the most beautiful and challenging thing I have ever experienced. And so, so deeply worth the effort.

At some point, the labels we give ourselves carry less weight. To me, being a human is about giving and receiving love.

I dream of a day where the love I experience with my wife is possible for all humans, not just the heterosexual ones.

The criminalisation of love, whether legally as in 71 countries, or societally as in many corners of our own country, is the most tragic thing I can imagine.

Bravery is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. My journey was about overcoming the fear and reality of rejection, doing away with the scripts, and banishing shame.

The tree that has grown from that little seedling provides comfort to everyone who gets to know me, queer and straight. This is something I am deeply proud of.