It’s *so* strange to put words to this, but I feel like purity culture made me so disembodied that I used to interpret my sexuality “intellectually.” As if my sexuality was this nebulously logical and abstract thing — not something present and connected to me.

I feel like I mandated my mind to tell my body who I was, using others’ templates and paradigms to copy myself into, instead of letting my body organically tell ME who I am — instead of observing how my body naturally responds to real-world stimuli without my mind’s interference.

The more physically active I become and the more comfortable with myself I get and the more I listen to this damn flesh-suit — the more my brain is not on cloud-fucking-nine lost in space on Planet Bumblefuck and I’m like HOLY SHIT, this is what it’s like to be *present* in life?

I told a group of lovely queers over Zoom the other week how I feel like I spent my entire life as some disassociative, detached being — forever destined to be a third party observer to the world moving around me — until I discovered for the first time that I *have a body.*

Being gay has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to me. It has woken me up to myself. It has showed me that I have a body and a life worth enjoying, and that I should not let myself become a mechanical robot who goes through the puritanical motions until I die.