Breaking the Cycle of Repression
One of the hardest truths I’ve carried as a lesbian is this quiet, aching belief that I’m not worthy of love. It’s not loud or dramatic—it doesn’t shout or demand attention. It’s just there, lingering in the background, like a low hum I’ve learned to live with. For a long time, I didn’t even realize it was there. I thought I was just “cautious,” or “picky,” or “taking my time.” But if I’m honest, it’s always been more than that.
If I trace this back, it all makes sense. As a kid, every time I caught feelings for another girl, I hit the brakes hard. Not a soft, “Maybe I should think this through” hesitation, but the kind of screeching halt where you shove your heart into the glove compartment and pretend it isn’t yours. My brain’s favorite defense mechanism? A quiet, convincing whisper: “This isn’t real. You don’t feel this. It’ll go away.” And somehow, I believed it.
So instead of letting myself feel anything, I became an expert at pushing those crushes aside. Step 1: File those feelings under “Not Allowed.” Step 2: Pretend nothing happened. Step 3: Wait in quiet agony for the feelings to fade. It was like clockwork—routine, predictable, and painfully effective. And it worked, in its own way.
But that kind of avoidance comes with a cost. Sure, I wasn’t forcing myself to date boys or perform some version of myself that wasn’t real, but I also wasn’t letting myself be real. Or happy. Or even open to the idea of love. Protection mechanisms are funny like that—they don’t just shield you from hurt. They shield you from joy, too.
The result? I became cautious. Hyper-cautious. If life is a swimming pool, I was the kid sitting on the edge, feet barely skimming the water, while everyone else was splashing and laughing and diving in headfirst. And as much as I told myself it was safer that way, deep down, I always knew it wasn’t what I really wanted.
So now, as an adult, I keep coming back to one question: How do you unlearn something that feels so deeply stitched into who you are?
