Tag: Vancouver

Pride!: M.’s Story

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The first time I came out, I lied.
I told a story that never happened.
But in that moment, it was the only way I could tell the truth.
I was 15. In a Catholic Sisters school. Closeted.
And carrying enough shame to light every candle at Sunday Mass.
So I made up a story.
A boy. A waterpark. Two accidental boners in the changing room.
I told my best friend at the time that I saw a naked senior guy at the waterpark, and we both got instant boners.
Was it believable? I mean… no.
Was it weirdly specific?… Maybe.
But it was the only version of gayness I thought she might accept — 
if it came packaged like a confession instead of a fact.
I wanted her to be curious. Supportive.
To say something like, “Oh my god, really? Tell me more.”
Instead, she blinked. Changed the subject. And that was it.
The closet door slammed shut again.

Second try. 
New story. New lie. New setting. New hope. Same best friend.
This time: a man in the library. We exchanged numbers. We texted. A whole made-up story, with some text messages to prove it.
(There was no library. It was a guy I met online.)
And she —bless her homophobia— told me to block him.
That it was the only way for “the thoughts” to go away.

Ma’am… they did not go away.
My coming out attempts were failing. But still, there was this urge.
An instinctive need to share what I was feeling.
Not because I needed to announce it —
but because I needed someone else to say, “It’s okay.”
Keeping it a secret made it feel wrong.
Made it feel shameful.

SHAME.

I gave up on telling her. We drifted.
Best friends turned into strangers.

*****

Then came camp.
No, not like that, I mean actual summer camp.
Religious, of course. Orthodox church this time, for range…

I met a girl. We hit it off instantly.
The camp ended. We exchanged numbers.
And a week later, I texted her. Told her the truth.
This time, no fake boys. No boners.
Why her? I think I just had a gut feeling.
I’d been attending church camps since I was a kid — and for the first time, I’d made a friend who wasn’t there for the Jesus of it all. 
She was there for the fun. And somehow, that gave me reassurance. 
That maybe —just maybe— she wouldn’t think I was going to burn in hell.

Part of me felt: If this goes badly, the stakes aren’t high. I haven’t known her long.
“Hey. I need to tell you something… I’m gay.” I said
She replied: “I hope you’re not joking. I don’t tolerate jokes like that — I have gay friends.”
I found out later… I was her first gay friend.
She just wanted to make it clear she was safe, before she even had the words to say it. She’s now my lifelong best friend.
And that’s when I learned: Some people just get it.
Even if they’re still figuring out how to say it.

*****

But from there, I wasn’t coming out as much as I was living out.

It became less about declarations and more about decisions.
Who deserves to know me? Who deserves access?
In the Middle East, coming out isn’t an event — it’s a strategy.
You don’t burst out of the closet. You leave little doors ajar.
You observe. You feel it out. You find your people.
I met so many who got it.
Supportive friends. Chosen family.
People who held space for me.
But I also had to let go of some people I thought I’d keep forever.
People who said they were okay with it — but their eyes changed.
They saw me differently.
As unserious. As broken. As someone struggling.
Even when I was not really struggling.
And honestly? That can be worse than rejection.
That quiet shift, from friend to case study.

SHAME!

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even angry. But it was necessary.
Their silence told me everything I needed to know.

At that point in life, I didn’t feel the need to come out anymore.
I had my people. My little queer bubble. My peace.
But there was always that question.
“Do your parents know?” “What about your brothers?”
“Have you come out to your family yet?”
There was no roadmap.
And I had distanced myself from my family. Partly because of geography…
and partly because of me.
Because of the life I was building, and the parts I wasn’t ready to explain.
I had seen how queerness was met in my family: reactions that made me afraid of what it could do to the dynamic we had; how it might change things, forever…

But there was my cousin. My closest cousin.
The one who told me everything: hookups, dating drama, men with questionable tattoos in questionable places.
She clearly trusted me, so it finally felt like the right time to trust her back.
When she asked about my love life, I told her. It didn’t make sense to lie anymore.
“Hey, you know I date men, right? I’m gay”
She blinked. Paused.

I could see her flipping through some imaginary “How to Talk to Your Gay Cousin” guide — one she hadn’t finished reading.
And even though it wasn’t long ago, the memory’s quite blurry now.
But I remember the awkwardness. She asked if something triggered it. If something happened to me when I was younger. As if there had to be a reason.
And she ended with: “I won’t bring it up again… unless you want to.”
That was the cherry on top of the shame sundae.

SHAME.

We haven’t spoken  since. Life drifted us apart.
But if I’m being honest… I chose to let it.

*****

In my last visit to Lebanon, I met my Catholic school friend again.
The one I lied to — just to say something true.
We ran into each other years later and were catching up.
And somewhere in the conversation, she figured it out.
She put two and two together and looked at me and said:
“I’m really sorry for how I reacted when we were younger.
I didn’t know how to process what you were telling me.”
And, for the first time, I didn’t flinch.
I understood. I had made peace with it, with her, with the past, with myself.
And I realized… That was maybe what I needed all along.
Not an apology. Not validation. I just needed to be seen.
To have someone look at me — not as who I was when I first tried to tell the truth, but as who I’ve become since.

*****

Living in a society that doesn’t tolerate your queerness isn’t just hard —
it’s disorienting.
It rewires how you see yourself. How you remember yourself.
How you imagine others will see you.
The way we’re raised makes it almost impossible to believe that “love is love,”
when every message you’ve ever received screams:

SHAME. SHAME. SHAME!

But somehow, despite all of that, we find each other. We find ourselves.
And once we do, we begin to learn — that Pride isn’t just a destination we reach.
It’s a practice we return to.

A conversation we carry. A story we tell. A quiet, rebellious act, not just for ourselves, but for those still searching for their reflection.
So maybe my story doesn’t end with one perfect coming out… but with a dozen imperfect ones. Some with lies. Some with silence. Some with pain.
But also, some with laughter. Some with apology. And some with peace.

And even now —living in Canada, a place I chose because I could finally breathe; because I could finally say “I’m gay” out loud without looking over my shoulder— even here, with all the safety and freedom I’ve found…
I still think about those who don’t have this.
Those who wake up every day to a cup of shame served by their families, their governments, their gods, their “friends.”
Those who have never had the chance to live their truth and are still told that love is wrong.
We still live in a world where Pride is a privilege.
And I don’t take that lightly.

So if I have it now —if I get to walk through life with my shoulders a little higher, my voice a little louder— I want to honour every version of me that never thought this would be possible.
Because, the pride I feel now?
That is one of the greatest blessings of my life.

And I’ll never stop being grateful for it.

Pride!: Jodi’s Story

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I began cross-dressing in my early 20’s. It was always in secret, and always followed by shame. When I was done, I would throw the clothes away and vow to never do it again; a vow that would last only weeks or months, before I gave in and bought another skirt or dress. I did this for two decades, as I continued to fight with myself over my true identity.

When I moved to Edmonton in 2013, I went to a safe consignment store I knew about from when I had lived in the city years earlier. I bought a cute leather skirt and a black, sleeveless knit top with a zipper in the front. All I needed was black stockings and some lacy black panties to have a complete outfit. See, I don’t have a fetish for lingerie, but it never felt right dressing with my stupid boy underwear on.  

I drove to a lingerie and toy store nearby, in a strip mall in the West End. By the time I got there that Saturday evening, the parking lot was almost empty. I wasn’t sure how I would be received in the store, and I was really nervous, so I parked as far away as I could. This made no sense: I would probably look more suspicious parking that far in an empty parking lot. And besides, I couldn’t see if any other customers were in the store from that distance. Instead, I walked over to the Arby’s next door, got some food, and sat by the window so I could watch the lingerie store. After watching for 45 minutes with no one going in or out, I figured it was a pretty safe bet that the store was empty. I had also finished my food by then, and didn’t want to look any more suspicious than a middle-aged man staring at a lingerie store for almost an hour would look. 

I gathered my courage and went in, quickly heading to the far corner where no one could see me. So much for courage.
I started looking at the display racks, too afraid to even touch anything. I guess I was hoping to find that magical rack that had just what I wanted, in my size, right in front where I didn’t have to look for it. Needless to say, this didn’t happen.  On my second pass through the racks, a clerk came over. She was short, very muscular, covered in tattoos, with bright red hair. She looked tough and mean, and intimidated me right away. She was between me and the front door so I couldn’t run for it… and I was kind of frozen in place, anyway. 
When she asked if she could help me find something, I said I was looking for a present — for my girlfriend. There, that takes care of that… I bet she gets this all the time.  “Ok, what size is she?,” she said. Damn, she flanked me.  What could I say?: “She is about the same size as me.” Ha, I certainly am a quick thinker!  She looked at me and said, “it’s for you, isn’t it?”  That’s the one thing I hadn’t planned for. I had no answer. Who is the quick thinker now? In defeat, I looked down and said: “yes.” 
I braced myself; will she punch me? Will she laugh and call over the other clerk? Maybe she’ll release the CCTV recording to the news. I won’t be able to show my face anywhere in Edmonton anymore. Oh no, I hope CBC doesn’t pick up the story, I might have to move out of Canada! How could I have let this happen? I’ve ruined the rest of my life for a pair of panties. Maybe I can get plastic surgery — yeah that’s it, no one will recognize me then. Hopefully they won’t fingerprint me. 
It’s amazing how much can go through your mind in a few seconds.

The one thing I didn’t count on happened, though: another customer walked into the store. Great, now there is a live witness to my humiliation. But to my surprise, this angel of a biker bitch redhead took my hand and led me to a dressing room to hide.  She told me she would bring me some things to try on.  I ended up staying in the store for hours, having a great time. When I left, she gave me her number.  She said if anyone laughed at me to call her.  She and her friends would take care of anybody. I believed her, too.
Her name was Ali and it didn’t take long for us to become friends.  She said she liked how brave I was for walking into the store.  I thought, “yeah brave, that’s it.”
Ali and her girlfriends immediately welcomed me into their group. They would go dress-shopping every Sunday, usually to a cool pinup shop on Whyte Ave. Afterwards they’d go to lunch. I would try on dresses with them, giving and getting fashion advice.  They were all tough-ass biker bitches so no one messed with us.  It must have been quite the sight for the other customers. 
My favourite dress was a sparkly silver, form-fitting dress.  I spent time in the back of the lingerie store, learning to walk in Pleasers.  I got a pair of black Mary Jane Pleasers that looked great with the dress.  The only place I wore this outfit was at home, but I loved it.  

And when it was time for the Pride Parade in Edmonton, Ali asked me if we were going.  Ok, that wasn’t really her style; she asked what I was going to wear when we went.  I didn’t know, I had never been to any Pride Parade, so she told me I would wear my silver dress and Mary Janes.  I was so nervous, I had never worn a dress in public. 
Ali’s fiancé said he would wear a dress in solidarity (and he did!)  That felt safe.  I would have this tough biker, Ali, with me, and a dress-wearing welder who was 6’3” and had arms as big as my thigh! 

The day came, and we hopped in Ali’s SUV.  Ok, she hopped in, and I awkwardly crawled in with Pleasers and a dress, managing to flash everyone as I did. 
On the way, Ali stopped at the coffee shop where her son worked.  I said “just bring my coffee out to me,” and she said “absolutely not. We are going there so he can see you in your dress.”  A small coffee shop in an Alberta suburb was the first place I ever went in public in a dress.  Suddenly, my nerves going into that lingerie shop for the first time seemed like nothing.  They almost had to hold me up to get me into the coffee shop.  I blamed it on the heels.  Once inside, her son laughed, but in a good way, and the other baristas gave us compliments.  It actually felt pretty good and boosted my confidence.

When we got to Edmonton and the parade, it was so crowded. I didn’t feel like I stood out anymore.  How could I stand out among the drag queens, people wearing next to nothing, and all the colours?!  We pushed right up to the front of the crowd so I could enjoy my first pride parade.  Ali’s fiancé and I had our picture taken with a drag queen.  The only downside of the whole day was learning that pleasers really aren’t meant to be worn for walking and standing all day.  I ended up walking barefoot on the hot pavement, it hurt less than the heels. 
But still, I basked in that feeling for weeks. For the first time ever, I felt no shame for being who I was. I realized I am not alone, and that the entire world is not against me.
I never threw my clothes out again.  My clothes, and especially my shoes, have become more comfortable since then, but that Pride Parade was the start of my acceptance of my true self.

Shortly after that Pride, I got a tattoo of a female eye, looking out of my heart. Just a peek out, but for me, an acknowledgement that she was in there all along, and the process of letting her out had finally begun. She had always been watching, waiting for the day I would let her be seen.

Around the World: Nizar’s Story

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I grew up in a small town on the Mediterranean coast of Tunisia, a place where being different often meant being targeted. For those unfamiliar, Tunisia is a North African country with a rich and complex history. From the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Berbers, Ottomans, to the French, many civilizations have left their mark. It’s a beautiful country with stunning landscapes and, if I may say so myself, a lot of beautiful men.

But despite its beauty, Tunisia’s laws are not as progressive. According to Article 230 of the penal code, same-sex relations are criminalized, with penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment. So, while the country is breathtaking, it’s not exactly a safe space for someone like me.

From as early as kindergarten, I knew I was different. My feminine manners and femme-presenting nature made me a target for relentless bullying. Before I even knew I was gay, people had already decided it for me. They called me “fag” and other slurs, and I couldn’t understand why. I felt trapped in a cycle of fear, confusion, and self-loathing.

Looking back now, I realize that people often fear what they don’t understand. In a place where traditional gender roles were set in stone, my existence challenged their norm. I didn’t know it then, but I was stronger than I thought simply for surviving that.

Every day, I’d walk down the street and brace myself for the insults, the rocks thrown my way, and sometimes even the beatings. I’d come home from school, bury my face in my pillow, and scream until I was exhausted. I couldn’t tell anyone, not my mom, not my dad, because I was terrified of judgment and ashamed of who I was. I contemplated ending my life more than once, but something within me, some spark, kept me going. Maybe it was hope or just pure stubbornness, but I wasn’t ready to give up.

As I approached my final year of high school, I knew I couldn’t stay in Tunisia any longer. I needed to escape. My parents couldn’t afford to send me abroad for school, but I was determined to find a way out. Here’s the funny thing about desperation: it makes you creative. I started browsing a website called GayCupid, it doesn’t exist anymore, but at the time, it felt like a lifeline. I reached out to countless men from around the world, Italy, France, Canada, the US, the UK, hoping one of them could help me leave. I convinced myself I was in love with one of them, a man named “Tom”. For two years, I stayed in touch with him, keeping that hope alive. Eventually, he helped me get a visa to Canada as an international student.

Moving to Canada was a huge relief, but living with “Tom” during those first two years was challenging. Even though I had set the boundary that we would just be friends, I often found myself doing things I wasn’t comfortable with to maintain stability. Eventually, I decided that I wanted better for myself. Leaving his place felt like reclaiming my own agency after years of feeling like I had to compromise to survive.

Not long after I moved out, I found myself on the phone with my mom. I wasn’t planning to come out to her that day, it just happened. The emotions overwhelmed me, and before I knew it, I was telling her everything I had kept bottled up since kindergarten; the bullying, the fear, the pain. I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out. It was raw, emotional, and something I didn’t know I needed. At first, she struggled to accept it, but I realized that I needed to accept her too, her background, her limited exposure to different perspectives. My dad’s reaction was different. He simply said, “I don’t care, be whatever you want.” Part of me wanted him to care more, to cry with me, but in time, I understood that his indifferent acceptance was a form of love.

One thing I’ve learned is that acceptance is a two-way street. I was asking my family to accept me, but I had to accept them too. When I let go of the need for my mom to fully understand and embraced her own struggle with my identity, a weight lifted off my shoulders. It wasn’t about them; it was about me, about learning to love myself despite the years of hatred and misunderstanding I had faced.

Living in North America has its own challenges, but it’s nothing compared to fighting for survival back home. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to be one of those people who say, “Back in my day…” but really, the contrast is stark. Back in Tunisia, just being myself was like trying to get a massage while stuck in a war zone. But here I am now, free, resilient, and finally at peace with who I am.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from my story, it’s this: Sometimes, the journey to self-acceptance means accepting others, too. It’s about finding your own freedom without demanding that everyone understands it. The weight lifts when you let go of the need for validation and choose to live for yourself.

Around the World: Imogen’s Story

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Identified Patient

I am in Calgary today learning how to diagnose autism. The training is in the same hospital building where I was detained for a month and ultimately diagnosed with OCD when I was eleven. A month of one-way mirrors and cheese whiz toast and CBT worksheets. My current therapist sends me a message before I leave that says “I hope this trip is somehow good for you rather than jarring,” which I think was supposed to be reassuring but ends up coming off ominous.

At the Vancouver airport I text my partner and tell them I cannot stop thinking that I’ve forgotten something important and something terrible is going to happen. There must be a ritual I can do to prevent it, they joke. Ha ha ha. It turns out the feeling that I have forgotten something is correct, although the scale of the catastrophe is a little off. When I arrive at the Calgary airport and try to pick up my rental car, my driver’s license has expired two days earlier, and I have to get a cab. I had planned to maybe check out trendy restaurants that have popped up here since I left in 2004, but quickly I realize I’m going to be basically confined to the strip mall around my Best Western and the children’s hospital where my
course is being held. Wings clipped, I feel like I’m waiting for my sixteenth birthday so I can go through Peter’s drive-in for milkshakes or drive to the airport just to look at it, so I can start to imagine forward movement as a real possibility.

The view out the cab window is vast and empty and slow, and I realize I had forgotten how this place seemed to be a mismatch for the pace I wanted to go. Wheels spinning on ice, futility and pent up energy; knowing there was a whole big world out there where I wouldn’t be such an anomaly. In the parlance of CBT: the feeling didn’t necessarily tell me the truth. There was a whole big world out there, and I wouldn’t necessarily feel like less of an anomaly once I found it. But the idea of it was enough to give me traction, to propel me out of this place that always reminds me of how no one can hear you scream in space because there’s nothing for the sound waves to even bounce off of.

Did you know that it’s more common to be afraid of wide open spaces than it is to be claustrophobic? I am sure that I do not belong here. They gave me diagnostic powers by mistake, it is an administrative error. A Freaky Friday type mishap where I have woken up with unearned power and freedom. I spiral and sweat through the afternoon lecture, imagining all of the catastrophic sequelae of this mistake. My heart races. On the break I get an ice cream from the vending machine where my mom would get me ice cream before family therapy, like trying to coax a feral animal. Only she’s dead now, so I’m trying to coax myself back to productivity or achievement, to my hard-earned place on the other side of the glass this time. I am conscious that adult professionals probably don’t eat ice cream for lunch when surrounded by colleagues. At any second they may realize I’m an impostor, and send me back downstairs for toast, a PRN, a worksheet and a nap.

I go for a walk to try to feel better, and end up feeling sad and slow and lonely, a specific sensation that feels like dull prairie winter in my chest. Vancouver moves fast – my favourite restaurants and memories disappearing before I can make new ones. Calgary moves slow, the pancake restaurant I used to go to with my mom before skiing preserved like a bug trapped in amber. The steakhouse we’d go to after church. The dead mall, standing there like the husk of a giant insect, where I had my first job selling novelty swords to nerds with poor impulse control, and which I recognized recently when it was used as a set in The Last of Us. Everyone I could call from my previous life here has moved or died.

It is dense with memory and devoid of connection. When I was nineteen I saw another psychiatrist who told me he thought I had Asperger’s, which was a thing then. Likely because I looked at the floor while I talked to him, and told him that I believed that the problem was not depression or even OCD, but that “I suffered from a pervasive remoteness.”

These days I have mostly abandoned the CBT I learned when I was eleven at the Children’s hospital psych unit. I still eat cheese whiz on toast, because it feels like a hug. But in light of everything that’s happened, it feels unhelpful to say “that’s a catastrophic thought.” It’s trite, but the only thing that slows down my heart rate and lengthens my breath is gratitude. When I was thirteen I found queer youth group, and when I was fifteen I started volunteering to run it. When I was sixteen they started paying me, and I’ve been lucky to build that into a career as a therapist. The early parts of that were nurtured by old (to me) lesbians who wanted to see me be happy and succeed; who understood that I was doing my best in a hostile environment and wanted to believe in the idea that someone like me could be okay. You couldn’t take a kid under your wing like that now; it would be called grooming. But no one was ever creepy, and I wouldn’t be where I am now without them.

When I moved to Vancouver, queer people felt unfriendly and suspicious of difference. There were a lot of invisible divisions I struggled to intuit – the mirror is never just a mirror. No one was jumping to take me under their wing. I still had the embarrassing tells of someone from a town that hosted the national high school rodeo, whose social and cultural centre was a grain elevator, and where you could ride your horse to school and hitch it there. I used to think it was too easy here, that there wasn’t the kind of exposure to hostility that makes us tender with each other’s earnestness.

When I started writing this, what I didn’t want to happen was for it to turn into a kind of city-over-country supremacy that I think it’s easy for anyone, but maybe especially for queer people, to slip into without noticing. When we do that, what we’re actually trying to signify is the cruelty and stress of the places we grew up, but we tend to do so without examining our own capacity for cruelty that we pack up in our backpacks and Rubbermaid totes and bring with us across mountain ranges on Greyhound buses. I’d even hazard to guess that as much as we learn what to tolerate in relationships from our families of origin, we learn how to be in community in places that hurt us. From where I stand now, I know that under a lot of the cool disaffectedness that I used to be so intimidated by, there is often deep vulnerability.

What I brought with me was a pane of one-way glass, the pain of being observed and described, the specific pain of the identified patient. I roll the words around in my mouth. Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. I repeat it to myself over and over again like a mantra until my mouth is dry, and it seems to help. My heart slows down to match the pace of this place, the thing I couldn’t do when I was growing into myself

Around the World: Ryan’s Story

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I used to think identity was something I had to wear like a badge.
Queer.
Person of Colour.
Canadian.
A neatly folded résumé of who I was supposed to be before anyone even knew my favourite food or how I take my coffee.

In Vancouver, I could feel the labels arriving before I did.
Like I walked into the room after my own footnotes.

But then I left.
Packed two suitcases and a nervous heart, and landed in Berlin —
a city colder than I expected, stranger than I imagined,
and somehow, freer than I’d ever known.

No one knew me there.
Not the barista who handed me my first Latte Macchiato with a crooked smile, not the cashier at Rewe who tossed my groceries with zero small talk, not the friend-of-a-friend at a Kreuzberg Altbau party who didn’t ask “where are you really from?” Or “what do you do for work?”
just asked, “what’s your sign?”

I said Cancer.
They said, “figures.”

And just like that, I wasn’t explaining myself.
I was just existing.

Berlin didn’t care what box I fit in.
It didn’t ask me to choose between my softness and my strength.
It didn’t ask me to be a role model or a symbol or a teachable moment.
It just asked me to be.
To show up.
To dance to pop EDM remixes in Schwuz or twerk at a Latin party in Lido.
To get lost on the winding Straßes.
To survive on Simit, Franzbrötchen and Club Mate.
To fall in and out of routines, and sometimes out of love.

And so I travelled.
Not just through Europe —
though yes, I did float through Stockholm,
sweated under the Barcelona sun,
and blinked at the beauty of Prague’s cobblestones at midnight —
but I also travelled through versions of myself.

The me who stood silently in museums.
The me who laughed too loudly in the S-Bahn.
The me who forgot to be afraid.
The me who wasn’t performing — wasn’t on display —
just living.

See, travel doesn’t just teach you about the world.
It teaches you about who you are when no one’s watching.
When there’s no audience.
No expectations.
No need to explain your history to justify your presence.

In Berlin, I was “the Canadian,” sure.
But that wasn’t code for “outsider.”
It just meant, “you’re not from here, but neither are we.”
I was allowed to take up space.
To make mistakes.
To speak German badly.
To start again.

And maybe that’s what travel gave me most —
the gift of not being anyone’s definition but my own.

In Vancouver, being queer and a person of colour was often the first thing.
Before my name.
Before my jokes.
Before my energy even had a chance to walk in the room.

But in Berlin, in those trains and cafés and moonlit strolls along the Spree —
I got to be just Ryan.

Not reduced.
Not erased.
Not tolerated
But revealed and accepted.

Because I am queer.
I am a person of colour.
And I’m also tender, and smart, and sometimes a little too dramatic.
I wear sheer shirts and glitter nail polish.
I write poems, I’ll never show anyone.
I miss my dog when I’m gone too long.
And I love citrus scents like they’re a personality trait.

And that — all of that — is who I am.
Not a headline.
Not a box.
But a body in motion.
A soul in translation.
A person in process.

Now I’m back.
Different city, same name.
Still me — but expanded.
And when I walk into rooms now, I don’t shrink.
I don’t lead with the résumé of what I am.
I just say, “Hi, I’m Ryan.”
And let the rest unfold.

Because travel didn’t change who I was.
It just reminded me I didn’t need to prove it.

So if you ever feel like you have to explain yourself before you’re allowed to be yourself,
if you ever feel like the world only sees you in fragments — go.
Even if it’s not far.
Even if it’s just to the next town over, or the next friend’s couch.
Find the place where your name is enough.
Where you don’t have to be a statement.
Where you’re not reduced to your resistance.

Find your Berlin.
And then bring it back with you.
Wear it like a soft hoodie.
Speak it in the way you order your coffee.
Live it in the way you look people in the eyes when you say:

“Hi. I’m not here to explain. I’m here to exist.”
Just me.
Just Ryan.

Around the World: Bryce’s Story

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Let me take you back.

I was 18. That magical age where you think you’ve got it all figured out, but you still call your mom when your laundry turns pink. I had just hit that point in life where everything in my hometown felt too small. The streets, the routines, the same familiar faces. It was all closing in on me.
I needed space. Air. Maybe even some chaos. So, I packed up my car—if you could call it that. It was more of a metal box with an engine and a slight identity crisis. No GPS, no credit card, barely any cash, but a lot of heart.
I didn’t even tell many people I was leaving. I just drove west and decided I’d figure it out on the way.

When I got to Vancouver, I had exactly zero plans. Zero housing. Zero resources. But I had arrived, and that felt like… something?
I found myself driving around Stanley Park. I’d never seen anything like it. There were trees that made my little car look like a toy. Water that sparkled like it was auditioning for a movie. And people, jogging like they actually enjoyed it.
I parked and sat in silence for a bit, pretending this was all part of some Eat, Pray, Love moment. In reality, I was stalling because I had nowhere else to go.
That night, I curled up in the driver’s seat, hoodie rolled up as a pillow, trying to convince myself it was an adventure. The air was damp. The windows fogged up. But hey, I was free… right?

By morning, my back felt like it had aged 50 years, but I was still in one piece. I took that as a win. I stretched out, rubbed my eyes, looked out across the park and said, “Okay, day one in the big city—let’s do this.”
I drove into downtown. The city was buzzing: there were bikes, buses, beeping horns, neon signs. And somehow, every single person seemed like they had somewhere important to be.
Except for me, that is. But I didn’t want to look like an outsider, so I did what any self-respecting newcomer would do: I pretended. I adjusted my sunglasses. I leaned back like I knew where I was going. I even nodded at the people on the street, like I was one of them.

And then I saw it: a street that looked like it led somewhere cool. Brick buildings, people walking dogs, some artsy-looking cafés. Perfect. So I went for it.
Left-hand turn. No big deal.
Except, within seconds, I realized… big deal.
Because coming directly toward me, fast, was a silver Audi R8.
I froze. Like, full-body, “brain not working,” kind of frozen.

There are moments in life where time slows down. Where everything gets very clear, very fast. This was one of those moments.
I could see the grill of that car. The expression on the driver’s face (equal parts confusion and rage). And even the little sunglasses dangling from his rearview mirror. That man had money—and zero patience for a kid in a $2,000 car, going the wrong way.
I heard honking, shouting. I saw people on the sidewalk point at me like I was some kind of public safety demonstration. One guy just shook his head, like I’d personally disappointed him.

I did what my instincts told me to do: I cranked the wheel and swerved into the nearest side street—right past a massive green dumpster.
Parked—slammed my car into park. And just sat there.
I was shaking. My face was hot. I felt like I’d just survived an extreme sport, except the only thing I’d done was make a left turn.

And then the thoughts came, one by one, loud and clear:
Did I actually just do that?
Am I still alive?
Is it too late to move back home?

I slumped down in my seat, like hiding would help. I was parked beside literal garbage, and somehow it still felt like a step up from what had just happened.
I remember looking around to make sure no one had followed me; as if the Audi guy was going to chase me down, and hand me a bill for emotional damages.

Eventually, the adrenaline wore off, and something strange happened: I started laughing. Like, really laughing. The kind of laugh that starts as a nervous giggle and then snowballs until your stomach hurts. Because in the grand scheme of things… it was kind of hilarious.
I had survived my first real Vancouver experience. Not a sunset on the seawall. Not a cozy coffee shop moment. But a full-blown, wrong-way-down-a-one-way-street near-death experience.

Over time, I got better. I learned the roads. I found a place to live. I even got a credit card—with a limit so low, it was more symbolic than useful, but still. I figured it out. But I’ll never forget that feeling—of being completely out of place, completely lost. And somehow still okay.

And that, my friends, is how I learned about one-way streets.
Not from a sign. Not from a city tour. Not even from Google Maps.
No, I learned about one-way streets the old-fashioned way:
With fear. With adrenaline.
And with a luxury car speeding directly at my face.

Around the World: Paulina’s Story

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Mis raíces son de aquí y de allá.
My roots are from here and there.
But not literally here. By “here,” I mean Mexico—that’s where my “here” stayed.

Me and my family come from a long line of immigrants who arrived from northern Spain and Italy, eventually mixing with Indigenous people and mestizxs in Mexico. And no, I didn’t spit into a tube for Google to find this out.
I know, because where I come from, that kind of knowledge is passed down, close to the heart. Being of European descent still carries a kind of social value—less weight, more pride—even if it was five or seven generations ago.

Having that said, my gay genes are from all over the world!!
I only dare say genes because science hasn’t settled on it—it’s a mix of hormonal, genetic, and environmental factors. And I plan to tell my family that. So they can start taking responsibility for some of the emotional baggage they’ve passed down.

Yes, I’m from Mexico—from a city surrounded by three volcanoes.
Since I was little, my horizon has always been populated. It was hard to pick a favourite volcano, so I just decided to love them all. Which… maybe explains a lot.
I’m pansexual. And my volcano city was named Puebla by colonizers. Puebla doesn’t mean anything, but it sounds close to Pueblo—”town” in Spanish—just sapphic.

The city is colourful, artsy, painfully colonial. The population is mixed—Indigenous communities that still hold on to language and tradition, and whitexicans who think they’re more European than they actually are. There’s pride in food (rightfully so—don’t @ me!), but the snobbery doesn’t come from that. It comes from whiteness and class.
And even though we are all mixed, with Asian, Indigenous, European, black, over and over again, mestizaje didn’t mean equality. Now, Indigenous communities are a little better preserved, but that’s only because they have been pushed out to the peripheries—margins of the capital city.
In Puebla, waves of immigrants were welcomed: Lebanese people escaping the Ottoman Empire, Spaniards fleeing civil war, Germans leaving post-Nazi trauma behind. These communities were—and still are—respected, owning businesses, having their own schools, social clubs, factories. And indeed, in private schools in Puebla, you’re  taught German, English, and French.
But not Nahuatl. Not Otomí.

Close to my hometown is a valley called Cholollan—renamed Cholula. Please, add it to your bucket list. This city was once a spiritual hub for many Indigenous communities, all praising different deities, but gathered in the same land.
Not only pan, but poly.
The first time I lived alone was in Cholula. Mi Cholu. Colourful, bike town, full of markets and fields of flowers, maiz, and so many fireworks, like crazy, every single day there’s a saint’s celebration. Because colonialism ensured Catholicism wasn’t just adopted in Mexico — it was absorbed, so now there aren’t temples — called calpullis—  for different deities; now they are churches.
Puebla and Cholula are only 20 minutes apart: the whitewashed “we’re still European” city, and the cempasúchil lands that bloom every September.

I never really felt the need to come out to my family. I’d already come out as “the artist,” the cycle-breaker, the one who says no más to abuse and misogyny.
And as JuanGa said—and if you don’t know who Juan Gabriel is, how are you even here? Juan Gabriel was our Mexican Elton John, but gayer and way more legendary. He, maybe they, said “What is obvious doesn’t need to be asked” 

I don’t know if I had any queer relatives, I never saw anyone in my family that could have been.
What I did see were women who got shit done and men who “worked all day” but had mini-golf in their offices and collectible toys in their meeting rooms.
The women had strong hands that braided my hair so tightly it would probably qualify as child abuse today. But then they’d hand me a tortilla con aguacate y sal before dinner, and my favourite agua fresca—papaya…
Maybe they knew I was queer before I did.

But don’t get me wrong—I’ve known for a while. I just did gay stuff before I said I was gay. Like kissing my girlfriends at parties (with consent, always). I also shared my first orgasm with a girl.
It’s funny how we think we have “first times,” and then someone reminds us: “Didn’t that happen… back in the day?”
I thought my first time having sex was with my middle school boyfriend—he told everyone. I didn’t even come. Double asshole.
Later in life, I wanted to leave Mexico, but my Saturn return aligned with the pandemic, and I ended up living in San Francisco. There one day, I was with friends and playing Never Have I Ever, and someone said, “Never had sex with a woman.”
I didn’t put a finger down. But a friend said, “Wait—you told me a story from when you were 13.”
And I said, “We didn’t have sex. We just touched each other… and came.”
(Everyone laughed. I didn’t.)
It took my poly, demi, pan, ADD, PTSD brain a hot minute, but I finally connected the dots… My first time had been with a girl. YAY!!!!!!

By 28, I started calling myself bi. I didn’t need to come out dramatically. I just accepted it, named it, and started dating a woman.
We met on an app—because, of course. It was late 2020. She was beautiful—blue eyes, ballerina body, smile that could heal your inner child. It was sweet and short. I had to return to the U.S. We still orbit each other’s socials. A win.
Especially since my relationships with men tend to end with full drama:
The “never speak to me again” kind… or worse.

In 2021, I finally moved to Vancouver.
Why did I leave Mexico in the first place? Because I was afraid. Afraid to walk free. To wear something tight. To show my breasts.
I had experienced too much violence. Misogyny lived too comfortably in my home, in the media, in our streets. So I leapt. I trusted myself—and my craft as an artist.
Living outside of Mexico gave me perspective.
In Mexico, I’m not considered a person of colour. I had white privilege—despite my mom calling me the N-word for being “the darkest one.”
But here? I’m not white. I’m brown. More than anyone in my family would ever admit. And I embrace it.

I have an accent. YES.
I wear colours. YES.
I cook amazingly. I dance badly. I sing, not so bad.
I’m loud. My eyebrows speak before I do.

At a staff party for an immersive theatre company I worked at, I realized I was the only non-Canadian, non-white person there. We were drinking, joking, talking about patriarchy (as you do). Then this guy—let’s call him Hunter, because that’s his name—says: “You’re not like the other girls. You’ve got Big Dick Energy.”
I was like… “WHAT?”
And the guys were nodding. “Yeah, like you’re confident, you speak your mind…” One added, “All the women at work are into you. It’s like they see the big dick.”
Then someone else chimed in: “Or maybe… they’re into her because she doesn’t have a dick at all—but treats them as if she did.”
I didn’t know what to do with that info. Still don’t.
But I did find out later, at a New Year’s party, that they weren’t wrong. I made a move on one of the women—she said yes… until she didn’t. She ghosted me when I got COVID. Then asked me out again. So… not a total loss. Not a total win, either.

As I’ve grown, I’ve realized I don’t just love femme femmes or masc boys.
I love people across the spectrum. Masc femmes, femme boys. I love trans folks. I love queers. I love sapphics. I love love—as long as they’re not assholes or racist.
And the biggest victory, I love me. All my spectrum. All my mixed, from all around, magical self.
Even my lows. ‘Cause nobody gets depressed like I do. And most certainly nobody binges peanut butter at midnight like I do. And if someone does, I hope we can be friends.

My hope here is that younger people out there get to see more of us queers. Because we are not going anywhere, and they don’t have to wait 28 years to name themselves.
You don’t need to come out perfectly formed.
Just come out… as you.