Young on the outside, old on the inside, and not queer enough

[Trigger warning: some explicit references to sexual and end-of-life themes.]

I have the sex drive, lack of confidence, and outer shell of a sixteen-year-old boy. I have life experiences that rival those of a sixty-year-old and a burden of grief and lack of hope similar to those of a ninety-year-old. 

Nothing aligns with my biological age of 42. 

And I’m starting to really struggle with this. 

People look at me and say I look a decade younger — that’s been true most of my life and it was the same for both my parents and my grandparents for most of their lives, too, so there’s probably a genetical thing there. 

For the past decade I’ve enjoyed hanging out with people much younger than myself, even a decade or so my juniors, and didn’t really feel an age difference. But now I feel it. Because I feel so old inside. And I also don’t feel “queer enough”. Most of my queer friends or acquaintances, the younger ones as well as the older ones, all seem to have more familiarity and/or experience with queerness than me: their “queer time” has been longer than mine, by decades, and/or their exposure to, or ease with, queer concepts and behaviors is greater, more pronounced, more confident than mine. Some were already openly gay or bisexual as early as middle school or high school; others started “transitioning” decades younger than me; others feel comfortable with kink and/or sex toys, and/or have a lot of experience with ethical non-monogamy. 

I have none of this. I spent most of my life as the “pretty boyish girl” having vanilla sex with (mostly straight) cis guys. I can hardly find the courage to go into a sex shop to buy myself a new vibrator to explore by myself. Romantic and sexual relationships continue to be a total struggle & debacle for me (to the extent that I’ve ended things with the transwoman with whom I was romantically involved for the past three months and deleted dating apps from my phone).

I cannot find an alignment between my external looks & internal feelings, as I continue to struggle with how people look at me, perceive me, and behave with me; I would never go back to my earlier looks, from even just 2-3 years ago, but I still cannot wrap my head around how I look & feel now nor how people behave with me, apparently because of how I look. And maybe having a queer community around me could be helpful but it scares me and makes me uncomfortable and I keep avoiding it, at least partly. I have a few very close queer/trans/non-binary friends whom I trust deeply and with whom I feel safe & comfortable; but I struggle to broaden my connections in the queer world, to pursue new acquaintances or even watch queer shows. Because I don’t feel queer enough. Because with respect to my biological time I’m old but with respect to my queer time I’m still so deceivingly young & inexperienced. And because I wasn’t allowed to discover, explore, or express my authentic self for most of my life, for the best years of my life, so I still feel a huge amount of sorrow and anger and grief around “queerness” that prevents me from being able to connect more deeply or broadly with the queer community (be it even only through queer shows or queer artists).

Inside, I don’t feel just 42: I feel 84, I feel 100. I feel like I’m at the end of my days. 

I always thought I would die young. Not in a morbid way, but rather in a realistic way, maybe on one of my wild adventures. And I really don’t want to live in an aging, decrepit body. 

Part of why I’m feeling so old now is because I feel I’ve already experienced all there was to experience and there’s nothing left for me to do or try — at least, not without failing again as I’ve already failed in all my past endeavors, be they professional or personal. I’ve tried several careers and abandoned them all. I’ve tried to build romantic partnerships but failed miserably and gotten my heart broken so badly that I don’t have it in me anymore to try again. 

I have a couple short-term goals now: to help my left thumb heal so I can start climbing again and to train for my first full-marathon on trail for October 19th. Then what? 

Then nothing. No more goals after that, no more dreams. 

All I can see & feel for myself is burdens, inadequacy, and disalignment.