Letter to 18-Year-Old Madison

Dear Madison,

It’s me, Madison. Or Mads. We let anyone call us that now, not just the besties. (There were too many Madisons when you first joined the lacrosse team in college—yes, lacrosse, despite your zero years of experience.) Don’t worry, though. We still don’t go by Madi.

If you’ll indulge me, imagine we are facing each other sitting cross-cross-applesauce and holding hands. At any given moment as you read, my dear Mads, I want you to imagine that I am embracing you tightly. Whenever you need assurance, I am here, and I am holding you. 

I know your world intimately, and we’ll get to that, but since I’m a stranger, you should first get to know my world a little bit. Right now, I sit in my girlfriend’s living room on a slow San Francisco morning. The vanilla candle she lit warmly fills the room, and the steady silence of the morning is punctuated with the occasional slurp of the coffee I brewed for us or the tapping of her keyboard as she writes an email. If I’m lucky, she’ll lean over every once in a while with a smile and share a detail she forgot to mention about her day yesterday. 

June gloom is in full swing, a heavy marine layer blanketing itself around the city. Though I don’t always appreciate the presence of grey, this morning, I welcome it. This morning, it is the third day of Pride Month—my third one since being publicly out—and I feel deeply tender to the world and to me and to you. 

I tell you all of this not to brag, not even necessarily to pull the classic “it gets better” (though of course, I want you to know that). More than anything, I want you to know that the person holding you through this terrifying moment is someone who is so deeply filled with love and who is free from the shame that you’re convinced will never leave you. 

I know right now that you are sitting at your desk upstairs, Mom and Dad watching TV downstairs, oblivious to how you feel like a cliche for being the girl whose tears smudge the ink in her journal. I see the words that take every ounce of courage in you to put on a page because writing them down makes them real. 

“I don’t want to be gay.”

Those words are etched across my brain, including their placement on the page and the scribbles of fear leading up to them. Rest assured that while I don’t remotely share that sentiment today, I am not offended or hurt by your words. I know how true they are to you, and I know how truly and deeply delighted I am to be a lesbian now. 

Quite frankly, Mads, your courage astounds me. Every fear signal blares at full volume within your entire being, echoing between your bones and crawling through your skin. And still, you accessed a kind of bravery I am blown away by. In putting those words on paper, you took the very first step in connecting the chasm of space between your mind and body. 

This is a years-long journey we’ve been on, of learning the deep, inner-knowings of our being and the wisdom we intuitively possess, and I trace it back to you. You had the courage to listen to the ringing bell inside of you that knew, and despite it being one of the scariest things (to this day) that we’ve ever done, you wrote it down. You occupied a small journal with terrifying thoughts that could no longer stay trapped in your body, and I thank you for your courage. 

Though I know queerness for you, 18-year-old Madison, means pain, queerness for me, 24-year-old Madison, brings expansion. When I first came out publicly in 2021, I wrote that queerness was “only an introduction to self-discovery” in the ways that it allowed me to explore who I am outside of who I thought I should be. That concept, while true, was just a seed of the expansiveness that queerness has brought to my life.

This pride month is a strange one, to be honest. The thin veil of progress seems to have lifted in the world I occupy right now. Anti-LGBTQ+ legislation only seems to be growing across the country, and since the Supreme Court consistently finds new ways to strip the most marginalized of their rights, even something like Obergefell being overturned seems far too possible. On top of this—amidst this—our country continues to actively fund the genocide of the Palestinian people. This is the context of my pride month this year. This is the water I swim in daily, and the temptation to ignore it all is far louder than I’d like to admit.

Despite this, pride is the most poignant reminder of the practice of joy, community, and resistance. The legacy of this movement is one of imagination and creation amidst a world that is often deeply lacking in those practices. I wish I could find the right words to describe to you how much beauty and joy I have in my life—not just because I get to kiss a beautiful woman and hold her hand in public. The more queer folks I have in my life, the more I see how vast and wonderful life is and can be and thus how deeply worthwhile and necessary it is to continue fighting for the world as it should be. I see how a rootedness in interdependence and caring for each other is what sustains us and will save us. I see how joy is perhaps the most essential ingredient to survival and resistance. 

And to use language that perhaps feels more apt for you—while interacting with God looks a little different for me nowadays—I often encounter God most when I am in community with queer folks. I encounter God when I watch a drag queen lip sync to Whitney Houston while my friends and I scream in glee. I encounter God in the raucous laughter shared among friends making self-deprecating gay jokes. I encounter God creating and consuming art that doesn’t shy away from the paradoxical realities of existence in 2024.

I encounter God when I sit with you, criss-cross-applesauce, and hold you tightly. The shame you feel right now is a sticky, gooey slime that refuses to wash away, no matter how hard you try. It lingers in every conversation, leaks into every thought, and I need you to know that there is freedom on the other side. 

Yes, it gets better. Yes, shame’s slime will wash away bit by bit, and you will open your eyes to a world more beautiful than you knew could exist. But I write this to you to ensure that you know—in this terrifying moment—that I haven’t forgotten you. This “other side” only exists because of you.

I suppose this is a thank you letter, Mads. Maybe I’m holding you in this moment, maybe we’re carrying each other.

I love you.

<3 Mads