2013! Bring It Salt Lake City!

Hello, I’m Annalisa and I’m addicted to Twitter. Apologies in advance for the nausea I may induce, as I will be getting personal on this one and possibly talking about my feelings.

Recently I’ve been cracking into what I’m discovering to be a vast network of lesbians from all over the world who interact with each other in ways as trivial as hilarious crude jokes about breasts, but as significant as a legitimate support system for each other. I have never encountered anything like it.

I have a point to this, I promise. Living in Utah can feel very small at times, particularly within the queer female community. This has become apparent to me the past couple months as I have just exited a three year relationship.

One gets a sense of what is considered to be the “norm” around here, more of the same, and seemingly every girl is connected through friends or exes, we know this. There’s a sense of, “Oh, these lesbians in Salt Lake City are interesting and I’m sure most lesbians outside of Utah are probably similar.”

Boy, was I wrong.

There’s an air of confidence and maturity with these Twitter addicted lesbians, and I think that’s largely due to the fact that they’re all in such fervent support of each other. No cattiness, no backstabbing, no “he said she said” because those things are simply not tolerated on the Twittersphere. The bad eggs and Debbie downers get filtered out of the system and the diversity of these women is remarkable.

This is the same air of confidence I see missing here. I’m not sure if it’s this idea of globalization of lesbianism that helps at least myself feel more connected with the world outside of our little Utah fishbowl of nearly incestuous polygamist lesbianism, but it also leads me to believe that we really can step up our game here.

It’s not that I’m saying the women here are horrible. They’re not. You ladies are amazing. It’s just that being back on the dating scene, lack of genuine confidence seems to be a common factor and it truly breaks my heart when I attempt to wine and dine a beautiful, talented, intelligent woman and start to discover the usual female insecurity complex when there is absolutely zero reason for it to exist in the first place. I don’t blame you, I blame social constructs and gender norms.

We don’t need to get into details but I have two zero tolerance rules in relationships and one of those rules was broken. To stay true to myself and my own word, I decided to be brave and do what needed to happen.

I ended my relationship because my father always said that people get married young or stay in destructive relationships because they are too insecure to truly believe they deserve better. I give that advice to my friends, and it would be disingenuous and hypocritical of me if I were to not follow my own advice. I don’t regret it, it’s a learning experience like most things can be if you decide that’s what to make of them.

And you know what? I’m doing just fine. Great, in fact. Sure, I’ve had a couple rough days but that’s to be expected. Want to know why I’m doing just fine? Because I am certain that something will come along at some point and if not, things will be just fine either way. I may come across as arrogant but really, I’m in constant awe of the world around me, always consciously grateful for everything and everyone in my life, and that, my friends, is a surefire anti-insecurity strategy. It’s hard to get down on yourself when you’re always feeling incredibly lucky about your life regardless of circumstance. Happiness starts from within.

I suppose that’s my message this month. Please, love yourselves enough to choose to be happy and secure. Have a happy life by having happy days. Don’t overanalyze everything like most women tend to do, self doubt is self-defeating and counterproductive and inhibits the opportunity for progress and growth.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from my favorite book as a teenager, Looking For Alaska by John Greene because it just seems all too appropriate for this new year:

“Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible’ with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

To new beginnings and starting over, bring it on 2013. Lesbonation, Utah. Make me proud.

Tags: confidence, lesbian, relationships, scene, utah