While people are digging up photos of them from the beginning of the decade to post next to photos of them ending the decade, I find myself combing through my writing. (Mostly because I didn’t find any “good” pictures of me from 2010, but also I realized some major shit went down in my life at the beginning of the decade:)
2010 was the year I’d fully come out to myself and started to accept who I am. It was also that summer I went to my first pride parade and celebration – by myself – because I wasn’t really out to any of the friends I could go with. I remember it so clearly like it was yesterday, strangely enough. I had lied to my mom about having a “overnight weekend rehearsal so everyone is sleeping over at the rehearsal studio”, and arranged to stay with friends (both of them queer) who lived in the West End then. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what I was discovering within myself, and how attracted I was to people who are of the same-sex. I remember feeling free, and I remember feeling like I was myself for the first time.
That summer was also the first time I (half-jokingly) asked someone of the same sex out. She was the director of a show I had stage managed just before the summer, and rumour has it everyone who’s worked with her had a crush on her (I was no exception, evidently). I remember waking up after dancing the night away at Oasis (who remembers when that club existed on top of the Denny’s on Davie?), I was steaming buns for breakfast in her kitchen. She remarked on my ingenious method of steaming the bun, and made small talk. I, feeling courageous and silly, asked her if she’d like to go out with me. Even though she didn’t give me a direct “no”, my crush didn’t last long enough for me to ask her out again at the end of the year, when my studies have finished and she wasn’t a teacher of the school I attended any more.
At the beginning of the decade, I struggled to reconcile my faith and religion with who I was. I couldn’t fathom how I could be a Christian and lesbian at the same time. (Actually, according to an old blog post, I identified as “bi” then). I didn’t know where to go for help. I didn’t know if I’m even allowed to feel what I was feeling, let alone talk to someone about it. The more I thought about it the more trapped I felt. I couldn’t deny who I was and follow my religion blindly, when my church clearly rejects the “types of people” I was becoming.
So more events of note that started my decade:
-I worked at my first real theatre job in 2010, at the newly finished SFU Woodward’s, before any of the students were allowed in.
-I made a short film with three of my really good friends called Straight Forward that I bill as my “coming-out film” (embarrassingly, because I wasn’t good at story-telling with moving pictures yet).
-I was super productive in terms of my writing/ blogging, producing an average of almost 6 blog posts per month in 2010!
-I wrote about having a girl crush for the first time (and then many more posts about my feelings for her in the following months, including one where I wrote “I’m sorry” like 10,000 times)
Here’s a brief summary of my decade by the numbers:
-graduated from SFU with a BFA
-worked on 12 short films, maybe more?
-stage managed 19 shows
-designed lighting for 12 shows
-dated 6 people, slept with 11, and married 1
-travelled to 23 countries (and counting!)
-attended 3 high school best friends’ weddings
-gotten 4 tattoos
2010 launched me into a decade of self-discovery, love, and growing up. I wouldn’t have traded the last 10 years for anything, and I’m excited to step into the new year to see what the next decade will bring.
Where's My Dime? 