how to like a boy || a short story

Instructions

cw for internalized homophobia this started out as a fanfiction of "good luck babe" by chappell roan, from the perspective of the girl she sings about, but it soon turned more autobiographical. there are a few parts that i over-exaggerated to make the story flow, but all the feelings i've described in here are accurate. most of the people i've written about in here are real. no, i am not taken, so that part is incorrect. i did take quite a few specific details from my irl life - from my involvement in ap physics to my "rundays" - but i also randomly rearranged most of those details on purpose so they can't be directly tied to anyone. the boy i mentioned is based on a boy i'm friendly with irl - he's not my bf (obviously) but he's a great person overall. a week ago, i was writing kinematic equations in my ap physics class when i felt the need to write words instead. the first draft came to me pretty naturally, i wrote it on the same page as my test corrections for class and then later transcribed it onto my laptop (because i realized i had to actually turn in my test corrections to my teacher lol). the paper draft ended up being nearly five pages long - i had to cut nearly half of it to fit the 2k word count. this was probably one of my most difficult pieces to write. i've been struggling a lot with my identity and coming to terms with it. i spent the past few months redefining and getting to know myself a lot better, and part of that has been realizing that i don't like guys, after identifying as bi for a long time. while i live in a mostly progressive area, i still struggle to balance out my friendships in both the straight and queer communities. a few of my friends have called me a "straight lesbian" as a joke, due to my feminine (straight-seeming) appearance despite the fact that i like girls. i've faced a lot of exclusion and invisibility from the queer community, so the vast majority of my current friends are straight. i pretended to be into guys for a while in order to fit in with them, but i eventually reached a point where i couldn't fake it anymore. i wrote this partially for myself but also for anyone else who is struggling with the same thing. no matter how progressive your community might be, it doesn't mean you'll feel comfortable with your identity right away, and that's okay. i think there's often an expectation for queer people to automatically love being themselves and know who they are right away, and i wanted to bring recognition to the fact that that's not always the case. it's valid to go back and forth until you finally figure it out for yourself.