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I know the adolescent phenomenon of staring wistfully out of a rainy car window and pretending you're in an Avril Lavigne music video doesn't belong exclusively to lesbians, but I'm talking about the collective energy of this experience. Lesbians are the energy of staring wistfully out of a rainy car window and pretending you're in an Avril Lavigne music video, personified. And that's because yearning is an inherent part of the queer female experience. And I'm not talking about, like, the 2018 awards cycle, when Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga essentially performed yearning to sell their movie. I'm also not talking about Sally Rooney's Normal People, which is about a heterosexual couple who, for reasons unbeknownst, cannot be together because one plays football and the other one... reads books? Straight people, someone needs to tell you this once and for all. You are allowed to be together. You have always been allowed to be together. Romeo and Juliet is essentially hetero fanfic about what it's like to be gay. Your parents hate each other-who cares! For people who experience same-sex attraction, sometimes yearning is all we have. For me, yearning used to be everything-so much so that it damaged the relationships in my adult life. But before I had yearning, I existed in the Thirst Vacuum-a space that was so dark, so desolate, I couldn't yearn for anyone at all.
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