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I clicked further through the search results, then asked the engine, ‘can a non-binary person be a lesbian?’
The results were surprisingly sparse. Most of them missed the mark completely. Then I found an article by an LGBTQ+ news organisation, which linked me to a YouTube video. It said that yes, non-binary people could identify as lesbians, but it didn’t give me any solid reasoning behind it.
So I took to the comments section, of all places, and it was there that my research really took off. It was a surprisingly supportive environment, given that this was still the Internet. Someone suggested that in the absence of any terminology for ‘non-binary person attracted to one gender’, the definition of ‘lesbian’ should be expanded into ‘non-man attracted to non-man’. And vice versa for ‘gay’. That carried me over to a discussion of the lesbian flag, which had been updated in 2018 from pink, orange and white to several hues of each. One person suggested that the acceptance of non-binary people within lesbianism was inherent, etched even into its flag.
From there, one organisation claimed that the darkest shade of orange in it signified gender non-conformity. Further research seemed to solidify this.
That was good enough for me. There were other non-binary lesbians around. It didn’t seem like I would get ousted from the lesbian community if I identified the same way. I closed my laptop with a sigh of relief.
There was further thinking to be done. I still had lots of decisions to make. But my brain was fried, it was only nine o’clock in the morning, and the state of my stomach was now the priority.
The relief stuck around, though. I felt as if I was on the up.
Chapter Sixty-Two
No impulse decisions was my motto for the next few days.
Further Googling solidified my feelings about being non-binary. But most of it was aimed at young people, and there didn’t seem to be much out there to tell you what to do next. There was nothing that said: So, you’ve discovered you’re non-binary after fifty-two years of thinking you were a cisgender female. Congratulations! Now your marriage is in tatters! Here’s how to proceed.
The closest I could get was a cautious advice blog from a non-binary teenager in Australia, who didn’t say much of use to me except for one key phrase: ‘no impulse decisions’.
‘When the penny drops,’ they wrote, ‘you might be very excited. It can be tempting to tell people immediately. I advise you against this. Let yourself get used to your new identity first, and secure within it, because it’s entirely possible that someone around you may try to drop a boulder on it when you come out to them. Sad, but true.’
For this reason, I fought against my urge to contact Petra. I told myself I’d give it another week. Next Tuesday would mark two weeks after we parted – if I hadn’t heard from her then, I’d make the leap and initiate a meeting. After all, that was what she had proposed. A trial separation, just for a couple of weeks.
The whole world seemed different, though. It was as if I’d lost a layer of film over my eyes, and now every colour seemed slightly richer. Slightly more enhanced. Fog was less prone to crowding my brain – particularly at work – and it seemed that my brain fired quicker. Like something had been between my synapses, reducing the efficiency of information transmission, and now it had gone. Perhaps the question of my gender had been affecting me more than I realised.
“You seem better, Jean,” Laura said the following Sunday, a week after my panic attack.
“I feel better,” I replied with a genuine smile. “The heat breaking has helped!”
“What about you and Petra? I don’t wish to overstep, but are you…?”
“No,” I said, and bit my lip, feeling myself deflate. “I’ve not… no. We’re not back together. But we’re not splitting up, per se. We’re just… no further forward than we were last week.” Now I had to bite my tongue to stop myself oversharing.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “But your mental health? How’s it holding up?”
I blinked at her boldness, before remembering that she was the Mental Health First Aider, and it was her job to check in.
“Better,” I confirmed. “It’s better.” Then, in the absence of anything else to say that wasn’t a declaration of my newly-realised gender identity, I returned to my shelf stacking.
After work the next day, now that I didn’t have to fear spontaneous combustion or heatstroke every time I stepped out of doors, I took a drive up to Mum and Dad’s graveyard. A flash of guilt struck me as I realised that the last time I’d been up there had been that rainy day in April, the anniversary of Mum’s death. So much had happened since then. Victoria’s accident, Petra’s new role, my gender crisis… but it was no excuse, really. I took a bunch of flowers as well as the usual Prosecco and Guinness, as if in compensation.
To my surprise, the stone didn’t look too bad. Normally after any stretch of time it required a bit of scrubbing to shine it up again, but it seemed that someone had been up there, because as I approached I was struck by how neat it was.
“Well, well, well,” I said as I sank to my knees in front of their spot. “Perhaps someone’s been looking after you in my absence.”
I opened the can of Guinness and unscrewed the cap of the Prosecco, and with one in each hand, poured the two drinks onto the stone. The bottle of water followed, so that they wouldn’t dry into a sticky mess and attract wasps. The smell of the alcohol momentarily turned my stomach as I remembered my whisky experience from the week before. I hadn’t touched the stuff – or any alcohol – since then, and didn’t intend to. (Not that I’d had any chance to. I’d poured the remnants of the bottle away, and had declined Cass and Heather’s invitation to the pub at the weekend.)
“Maybe I should have brought the whisky up here for you, Dad, instead of chucking it away,” I thought aloud. “But then, it was cheap and nasty stuff. Not proper Scotch whisky. You’d have been horrified if you saw it. But then, you’d have been horrified if you saw me… that night.”
I had a sudden urge to tell them everything. And because there was nobody else around, and these were my parents, I did.
“Petra and I are on rocky ground. I don’t know whether we’re going to split up. We’ve separated for now, but there’s stuff I need to tell her, stuff that might end up being a game changer. I should have told her months ago, but I didn’t know how, and she was so stressed with her job. Plus,” I sniffed now, “she betrayed me. She started smoking again, and she only told me because she had no intention of quitting. I admittedly didn’t react the best way, but I was – am – so hurt. Knowing what happened to me after Lyndsey died from smoking-related causes, why would she do anything that increased the likelihood of the same thing happening to her?”
I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, roughly.
“It’s always been a deal breaker for me, and she knows that. So if, when we get back in contact, she’s still smoking… I think I’d have to call it quits for the both of us. Better to lose her now when we can both consent to it, than lose her to death and the ultimate heartbreak, no?”
