Living on "queer time"

Mourning what was and embracing what is

My partner and I recently got engaged, and it’s been a truly exciting time for us. It feels especially amazing to me considering it was only two years ago that my divorce was legally finalized and I was thrown into a brand new world.

In my “straight” life, I achieved nearly all of the major adult milestones I had been taught to want besides having children (I’ve never had a desire to be a parent). I went to college and graduate school, got engaged and married, started my career, and bought a house, all well before the age of thirty. On paper, I was living a lot of people’s dream life.

When, at the age of 31, I got divorced after realizing I was gay, I had the unsettling experience of “starting over” in a lot of ways. I lost all of the things I’d prioritized—a husband, homeownership, financial stability, societal approval of my life choices—and was left to do the painful work of picking up the pieces of who I thought I was and putting them back together in a new configuration.

It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t alone in that. There’s a concept that comes from queer theory called “queer time.” Queer time is the idea that it’s common for the lives of queer and trans people to progress differently from the lives of non-queer people, such that many queer and trans people do not experience time in the same linear way that their non-queer peers do. This means that for a lot of queer and trans people, major life events may happen later, in a different order, or not be experienced or prioritized at all compared to what’s typical for non-queer people.

A related concept to queer time is queer “second adolescence.” Because many queer and trans people don’t get to experience their teenage years in the same way as their non-queer peers, they essentially live them twice—first, as the versions of themselves they were taught they were supposed to be (where their queer selves are hidden, suppressed, or dimmed down), and second, as their authentic selves whenever they reach a point in life where they can fully step into their queerness. This could look like a person experiencing firsts related to queer sex and dating, openly enjoying queer media, or presenting in a way that feels more true to them in their twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond.

The main reason queer time and queer second adolescence are existing phenomena is because we live in a cisheteronormative society. Specific examples of things that have contributed to different life timelines for queer and trans people include:

• Kids learning from a young age that being straight and gender conforming is expected and rewarded and being queer and/or gender nonconforming is othered and punished.

• The AIDS epidemic, including the government’s (non-)response to it, society’s response to it, and the sheer number of queer people who died during it.

• A lack of queer and trans representation that has historically made it more difficult for queer and trans people to recognize and/or embody their queerness.

• The legal barriers to certain markers of adulthood, such as getting married (gay marriage was only legalized in 2015 in the U.S.) and having or raising children.

• The various wealth gaps that exist among queer and trans people compared to non-queer people.

• The financial burden of parenthood for many queer and trans people and the financial burden of transitioning for trans people.

• The higher rates of mental illness, suicide, and trauma queer and trans people experience due to the homophobia and transphobia that permeate our society.

With all of that weighing on us, and without even taking into account the increased negative impact for community members navigating the intersection of multiple marginalizations, no wonder a lot of queer and trans people feel like they’re “behind” in some way.

For me, recognizing my queerness and choosing to live it unapologetically required me to reassess my past, present, and future. I both mourned for time and possibilities lost and felt grateful that I’d gotten up the courage to live as a more true and beautiful version of myself. I was simultaneously frustrated I’d spent so much of my life on a path that culminated in a dead-end and elated I got to design a new path of my choosing before it was too late.

Queer second adolescence was also very real for me. After my divorce, I sought out queer books, TV shows, and movies to see what I’d been missing out on for so many years. I experienced the awkwardness and excitement of learning to date again and having sex in a non-heteronormative way. I finally understood what it was like to feel true physical and romantic attraction for another person. All experiences that under different circumstances might have been purely joyful, but instead were tinged with grief.

In truth, beginning again led me to some tough realizations.

I realized that I will never get back the time I lost living as a smaller, less authentic, less joyful version of myself, and no matter how much healing I do, there will always be pain and longing around that.

I realized that in my past relationship, my focus on achieving the next thing and the next thing and the next thing according to society’s blueprint kept me disconnected from my body, my queerness, and my own wants and needs.

I realized that one of the reasons I’d felt obligated to stay in a marriage that was wrong for me was because it fit into society’s perceptions of what a “good relationship” and “good life” are, which made me feel selfish and ungrateful for wanting something else.

And lastly, I realized that had I approached my “straight” life with the same scrutiny and intentionality that I approach my life now as a queer person, I likely would have figured out I was queer a lot sooner.

If it were up to me, queer time and queer second adolescence would not remain common experiences for queer and trans people. I hate that so many of us have had to spend large swaths of our lives living in ways we would not have chosen for ourselves if the circumstances were different.

That said, considering the current realities of the world we occupy, I do appreciate that queer time has given me a “second chance,” so to speak, to look critically at cisheteronormative standards and decide for myself, with intention, what aspects I do and do not want to partake in. Queerness, in general, has granted me so much expansiveness of being that I didn’t have before.

Remember how I mentioned that my partner and I are engaged? It was such an easy choice for us to approach our proposals in an unconventional way. Because we both wanted to propose, we elected to abandon tradition and do a planned double proposal. Not only was it simpler logistically because we didn’t have to figure out how to surprise each other, but also it was a lot of fun to co-create our proposal experience.

We also made the decision together to have a longer engagement and not immediately jump into wedding planning like the majority of couples do. When we asked ourselves what made the most sense for us, it was clear that the circumstances of our lives right now would make the wedding planning process extra stressful and anxious if we tried to do it right away instead of waiting.

Maybe those decisions don’t seem especially boundary breaking, but I never would have considered doing either of those things in my previous life. Living in my authentic queerness has helped me make the choices that feel good for me, regardless of others’ expectations.

Thankfully, anyone can change how they approach their life and relationships without being subjected to the struggles of queer time or queer second adolescence. In fact, this is an arena where straight and cisgender people would greatly benefit from taking their cues from queer and trans people who are leading the way to create new possibilities of living and loving (out of necessity and desire). Whether your decisions flow with the tide or go against them, it’s being able to articulate why you made a given choice that’s key.

I hope for all of us that we can make it a practice to question societal “shoulds” and “have tos” to ensure we’re making choices that feel aligned. And I hope for queer and trans people that we someday get to live in a world where all of the options available to non-queer folks are equally available to us.

Queerly yours,

Shohreh

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