you do not have to be good

Matthew — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:33:22 GMT

The first thing I ever learned about myself was that something was wrong with me. The second was that I loved stories. Fiction gave me someone else’s life to deal with. It was more than just entertainment—I needed stories because I needed to feel as though things could possibly change for the better, if not for me then for someone else.

It was the last weeks of sixth grade before our graduating class would start high school. Two boys took me aside and asked me if I knew what that meant. Just us three, hidden by the wide bark of an almond tree during our 45-minute lunch break between classes. I had not retrieved my food yet. Of course I knew what it meant, but by this age I had mastered feigning ignorance to keep me safely unaccountable so I simply shook my head. They shared a look that confirmed they had already discussed this at length and frowned. They were concerned, they’d said. I was admitted to an all boy’s high school and, quite plainly, the bullying would worsen. See, there would be stronger, more ruthless boys who could more precisely spot that I was different and make me pay for it. If I thought our small, privileged sixth grade class was bad then I was about to learn just how violent the real world could be.

But there was no need to worry because they would help. They would teach me how to act like a real man. We were twelve-years-old, and so lessons only lasted two, maybe three days and took place during lunch and sometimes after school. Perhaps it would have went on for longer if they hadn’t given up and laughed at how pointless the whole thing was. How I was just too girly. Nothing about me was right, and so nothing could be salvaged, not how I walked, talked, sat, ran, ate, listened, smiled.

But I never gave up. That summer I practiced everything they’d taught me to strangers, friends, and family, with varying degrees of success until it became clear to me that the most efficient way to be safe was to be, as it were, not there. I began to exercise disappearing.

First six weeks of high school I slept through all my classes, sat at the back, and only spoke when spoken to. I did not enroll in any sports, despite being named athlete of the year at my previous school, nor did I join any clubs, despite being an avid creative. No one knew anything about me, especially that I was gay, and so I was safe.

When I wasn’t trying to exist as little as possible, I was devouring stories. I was particularly drawn to narratives about bravery. A hero who battled some cosmic-level threat and somehow managed to win. Or when they got angry they turned into a monster people feared and, as a result, respected.

Zuko stands up to his father, For so long, all I wanted was for you to love me, to accept me. I thought it was my honor that I wanted, but really, I was just trying to please you.

In my little life, someone was winning.

Every year, I grew more proficient at my disappearing act. I did not endure any bullying or violence like some other boys—proof that my work was not in vain—and all the while I learned secrecy and silence.

I learned how to talk. I learned how to sit. When a boy smiled at me in a way that hued my achromatic life but I could do nothing about it, I learned to accept that I would always suffer a lonely life. I learned which women were beautiful and which were not. I learned which jokes were funny. I learned which parts of me needed to be negotiated in bad faith and, most importantly, I learned that the boys in sixth grade had been right all along. There was no saving a boy like me. The best I could do was pray and pretend. Until some (un)lucky event would finally grant me peace.

I fantasized about that day relentlessly, as though I could will it true.

[…] sometimes I wanted to be polite and sometimes I wanted to be charming and sometimes I wanted to be standoffish, so I would try on different words and demeanors for different occasions. Always, always, always wanting everyone to love me. To approve of me, to think I’m so nice, so sweet, so fun. Though I’m not always all of those things and sometimes I’m not any of those things. - Ava, nothing will change your life more than saying what you actually want to say

But with every story I finished, my vicarious catharsis began to feel emptier. I’d read the final page, scour all the reviews, make my notes, years might even go by, but I’d always look up and realize how detached my life felt from everything valued. I was not exercising any kind of bravery, in fact, I was living a pseudo-life. All that disappearing but I could not hide from myself. It was as though I were being asked, crucially, And so what? What about you?

Each time the ostranenie deepened. You think you are content with suffering for the rest of your life until you meet an 80-yeard-old queen who has, and she tells you the story of her life. Married. 4 kids. An attempt. Divorce. Now, looking for a realer love and it is all so lucid, her tears and yours.

You think love is available only if you remain a shadow of the other person, a silhouette with no discerning features but always following queue. That is until you watch a film about a boy in a cage who turns into a man in a cage and he dies in the cage, holding the key.

You believe God has ordained your pain and won’t take it away and you, some unfortunate woman and kids who didn’t agree to be here will all continue to the cycle of never knowing love because your life is built on a lie and then your task sits before you more prominent than ever.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

― James Baldwin

Even with all the lights off, sitting alone, in a quiet room, disappeared into nothingness. The question will always ring out: Now, what about you?

I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think knowing the answer is the point. I know you can’t find anything so long as you’re focused on hiding. That the best place to start is by speaking the truth. Stories reminded me that in my one, very brief, life I must make choices. I am likely to suffer. It is never too late. And no matter what I must decide what the hell I am going to do here.