Earlier this year I began the process of ditching my fake ID - one that I had carried with me for quite some time. Possibly forever. This counterfeit was so real, persistent, and evasive it even had me fooled. I had become so comfortable using this forged identity in place of my own that if I wasn’t careful, I felt parts of myself seeping into this convincing fake, no longer knowing where I began or ended. This fake ID was born out of trauma, self-hatred, internalised homophobia, and force-fed idealised ways of being, but was necessitated by a profound yearning for safety in its purest form. 

I long to feel safe enough to express love freely.

I yearn to return home without feeling the need to cleanse myself of guilt; guilty for not being ‘normal’, guilty for turning my back on longstanding cultural values, guilting for failing to prescribe to principles born out of cultural shame. For so long I felt my fake ID becoming more and more redundant, as I came to know myself with its erasure and potentially permanent deletion. 

Read more about Mutual Feelings in this beautiful piece written by Federica Caso.