Once there was a girl. Three people trusted her enough to share something sacred… but each time, she gave them nothing in return.
The first time was in the dark. There was a sliver of light coming from the hallway, reflecting off a mirror in the other room. I was in bed with my friend, covers pulled to my chin, trying to stay warm. I could feel her body beside mine–the smallest nervous movements. A quiet panic.
“I think I’m gay.”
My teeth clenched. My whole body went still, like if I didn’t move, the moment might pass over me. My mind started running–she’s a girl, so does she mean lesbian? Does she want something from me right now? Man, I don’t if I can fall asleep next to her now…
I didn’t say anything.
We never talked about it again. Our friendship unraveled slowly, quietly, until it was just something I couldn’t quite remember how to touch.
Five years later it happened again. This time in a car. My best friend staring straight ahead.
“I like women.”
I pretended not to hear her. I reached for the radio, turned the music up, said, “What?” even though I’d heard every word. My hands were tight on the steering wheel. I didn’t look at her. Not really anyway. I let her drift away, too.
The third time should have been different. It felt like a test.
My on-again, off-again boyfriend told me over the phone that he’d been with a man. He said he liked it. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He asked me what I thought. I froze long enough for him to fill the silence himself–talking about how it didn’t have to mean anything, how this happened to straight guys too.
“No, of course not,” I joked, trying to be light. “You’re straight. I oughta know.”
I used to think I would be brave in moments like that. Like I’d show up as someone safe. But all I felt was fear. I had been taught that these kinds of truths were dangerous. That they led somewhere you couldn’t come back from. So I did what I knew how to do. And sadly, it means that I was that girl. Three times given something fragile and real. Three times unable to hold it.
What makes it harder is that underneath the fear, I wasn’t actually disgusted or angry or even confused. I was curious and my heart was breaking for them. There was a part of me that knew this secret didn’t change who they were. But fear was louder. Fear always got the mic in those days.
So I went dark, and let the truth evaporate.
Years later I lived in San Francisco. I met people who didn’t hide. I learned how to sit in the first wave of discomfort instead of running from it. I learned that someone else’s desire doesn’t threaten mine. That love doesn’t fracture when it looks different.
I don’t think about those three people as ghosts, exactly. More like soft unfinished sentences. I don’t know where their lives went. I only know who I was when they trusted me, and who I wasn’t yet.
I don’t believe in redemption. I believe in becoming. And in not pretending the silence didn’t happen.
Sometimes I imagine what it would have sounded like if I had said something back. Not anything heroic. Not a speech. Just a small, human sentence.
I’m still here.
You’re still you.
But I didn’t have those words then. I only had quiet. So that’s what I gave them.
Now, when someone tells me something tender, I feel that old instinct: the urge to go still, to protect myself from what I don’t yet understand. But I also feel something else underneath it. A remembering. A hand on my back. So I try to speak now. Certainly not perfectly. Not bravely. Just honestly.
And sometimes, in the dark, I think about that girl in the bed, the girl in the car, the voice on the phone, and I send them something I couldn’t give before: a little light.
