Release

My point: why do you have to call yourself anything? Because, if you don’t, freedom. Because, self-actualization. Because, fluidity and not calcifying into what that label will make you.”

“How about, because having an identity can be just as powerful as actualizing my fluidity?”

“But are you sure you only like boys? Why not keep your options open?”

“Because my entire upbringing has told me there was only one way to be. That any other way is wrong. A deviation from their certainty.”

“All the more reason to–”

“I’m not finished. When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead, then Jesus, Ange, the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, one that was my own, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

“Is it not a shame,” she says, “that we must wait until the end of the world for all boundaries to fall?”

“I’ve committed my life to this. I’m not perfect, bro, far from it, but I know that love can be perfect. I just . . . I want you to know that I know I’ve been doing what they’ve been doing. For too long. I’ve put conditions on you. I’ve looked at you with pity.”

“They’re your parents. They’re meant to love you because. Never in spite.”

“It’s a stupid story,” Angela said. “The good brother gets nothing for being good. The bad brother gets all the fun and just has to say sorry once.”

“It’s a dream, this. It can only be. It offers you forgetfulness and the forgetfulness is sweet.”

“My point: why do you have to call yourself anything? Because, if you don’t, freedom. Because, self-actualization. Because, fluidity and not calcifying into what that label will make you.”

“How about, because having an identity can be just as powerful as actualizing my fluidity?”

“But are you sure you only like boys? Why not keep your options open?”

“Because my entire upbringing has told me there was only one way to be. That any other way is wrong. A deviation from their certainty.”

“All the more reason to–”

“I’m not finished. When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead, then Jesus, Ange, the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, one that was my own, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

I can’t help how I feel. I can’t help missing him.”

“You know, everyone says that, but I wonder if it’s actually true. If you tried hard enough.”

“I can’t help missing you.”

“That’s different. I’m supernatural.”

Do you even love me?” Adam asked.

“More than my own life,” his dad said, immediately.

“But you don’t want to have to do anything with that love. You don’t want it to have to work.”

“You have no idea how much I work to love you.”

“It may cost you, my Queen. It may cost you dear.”

“All the best journeys do, faun.”