My Pinned Tweet Is Sound Evidence That Queer Time Journey Exists

I won’t lie, I have quite a few most loved tweets of my very own.

I believe I’m really funny and I would have beloved to elaborate on a single of my much more underrated missives, but let us be true, I experienced to create about this a single. There is a motive it has been my pinned tweet because 2016. It is a best distillation of me — It’s my origin tale.

mother: why’d it consider u so extensive to tell me ur homosexual?
me: what r u talkin bout I tried using to convey to u each 12 months on image day pic.twitter.com/IobsFKFtSa

— kayla kumari upadhyaya (@KaylaKumari) August 14, 2016

The making of the tweet went anything like this:

I try to remember I was visiting my mother and father in my childhood household and was bored. I started off going as a result of aged photographs, and when I arrived across just one of these faculty images, I flashed again to a memory of my full spouse and children making pleasurable of me for wearing a colorful striped sweater each individual one 12 months for picture working day. So I hunted as a result of albums and bins to find extra faculty pictures, and sure more than enough, my spouse and children was accurate. I rocked the similar glimpse each and every year without are unsuccessful (until eventually late middle school/large college when I switched to graphic tees). But wherever they noticed nerdy ass thick, striped sweaters, I noticed one thing else — the literal gay pride flag. I proceeded to scan and add 4 of the most flamboyantly, rainbowfied iterations of this sample. I wrote the tweet and fired it off. It didn’t go wildly viral, but it was more popular than I expected. And the persons who appreciated it definitely appreciated it.

It’s a foolish tweet, but beneath the humor, there is one thing there. 1 of my mother’s quite a few reactions to my queerness integrated centering herself. She legitimately was discouraged I’d taken “so long” to convey to her. She didn’t acknowledge a lot accountability for it. At the threat of obtaining much too deep about a tweet, I assume this was partly my way of reclaiming company in that argument with her. My girlfriend recently wrote this about self-deprecating humor: “It is a way in which numerous queer people today find out to system points. By building pleasurable of ourselves, we are much better in a position to have an understanding of the points that we can not appear to be to uproot.” That fucking resonates.

When I fired off this tweet, I’d only been out for a couple of years—and out to my mom/household for even less—and I was still in a phase of my dyke journey where I so often shouted I’M Homosexual on the web and in genuine life. It continue to felt liberating just to say it. Here was photographic evidence I have normally been shouting it.

Did I basically know I was homosexual when I wore these gay flag sweaters? Naturally no, but one thing I frequently examine in my producing is the notion of re-analyzing and reimagining my closeted adolescence as an out queer adult. How do my encounters and perception of self now tell and completely transform my activities and perception of self in the previous? I believe in queer time journey. I have a peculiar but strong conviction I realized even when I did not know.

Also, for people wanting to know, indeed my mom sooner or later did see this tweet. She enjoys it.

Kayla

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, shorter stories, and pop lifestyle criticism residing in Miami. She is presently a fiction editor at TriQuarterly. Her small tales surface or are forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Catapult, and The Offing. Some of her pop culture creating can be identified at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Minimize, and other people. You can abide by her on Twitter or Instagram and study much more about her do the job on her internet site.

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