Words by anonymous // illustration by Kseniia Vannoy
I met Lily* over ten years ago. Yes, I’m using a pseudonym, but I also think the name kind of suits her gentle and delightful personality. We were freshly acquainted colleagues, working together in a really challenging job we disliked. We spent long, arduous days in an unfriendly office, separated by high-walled cubical partitions, some brimming with the colourful personalities of their owners, others bland and lifeless, reflecting the realities of the shitty, underfunded, social service sector environment. As young workers tasked with unraveling complex and dynamic relationships within families I thought we had a fair amount of expertise in what was right or wrong, for the people we worked with. I’m not sure we knew as much then about relationships as I once believed.
Our friendship was easy, and formed quickly. Lily was quirky, generous, and a lot of fun. A purely hilarious, dorky type who was also innocuously sweet, with a voracious loyalty to those she cared for. We were part of a group of 20 somethings, navigating the swirling convolutions of that time of our lives together, often through wobbly, starlit nights out in Melbourne. A much less glamorous and certainly less sexually-fuelled version of ‘The Secret Life of Us’.
Although I’m naturally inclined not to categorise people based on their sexuality, for the context of the story, I think it helps to know that Lily is a gay, cis woman; I am a bi, cis woman, and when we met, I was in a long term relationship with a man (I bet you can guess how that turned out). Although we connected deeply and I concede now there were times I thought she was cute, I didn’t feel romantically for her, I was focused on myself and my vacuous, heteronormative relationship. Over those same years, she dated kind, interesting, and at times unfortunately muppety women who weren’t at all good enough for her.
Like any group of 20-something, becoming 30-something friends, we experienced our fair share of pointed drama over the years. Together we breathed in sweet, crispy summers, painted with Aperol and Chardonnay (fortunately not mixed together). Through the drizzly winters, we mulled the cheapest of wines in spiced vats of floral cinnamon and orange. By day we worked hard on our fledgling careers; by night we danced and frolicked through the hippest of Melbourne haunts. Players in the perennial Greek tragedy of the young adult, we all grew together and apart, and together and apart repeatedly, against a backdrop of the cycling, but equally confused Melbourne seasons. We found comfort in each others’ chaos throughout the years, and somehow in a glittering blink, a decade passed us by, lives changed and shifted alongside and by each other.
Next is the juicy part of the story that you’ve probably been waiting for since you clicked on the baiting title of this article. After the end of my train-wreck of a long-term relationship, Lily and I both found ourselves single. She helped me through the toughest couple of years of my life, and somehow, even though we had always been very close friends, we were drawn even closer. We’d text or send voice messages every day, spend every weekend together, and occasionally I questioned if there had been delicate flirting between us, softly exchanged like silk or lace on bare skin. Her attention and wispy flattery left me floating electrically a small smidgeon above the ground, but I wasn’t sure how she felt. Until one day, she told me.
Lily texted me late one night, explaining that for the last several months, she’d come to realise she had feelings for me. She was resolute in the way she felt about me. She didn’t want things to be casual, she wanted me. Me? My immediate reaction was a flurry of excitement. Then came the near-nuclear deluge of questions, flooding my brain, causing what could only be described as a critical meltdown. How long had she felt this way? What did she want to happen? How would our lives change now? My chronically anxious, attachment-oppressed millennial brain locked down. Then, what came next was the ~big question~ jarringly popping into my mind, gobbling up any clarity I was beginning to grasp: did I share the feelings of hopeful longing that she had for me?
I foraged for the answer like a truffle pig on speed, attempting to promptly excavate logical thoughts from deep within my psyche. Nothing. Was there a logical answer? Possibly not. I erratically googled outrageous questions like “what does love feel like?”, finding only distracting, ramshackled pubescent subreddits about high schoolers’ first loves. Finally, I confided in one of my best friends, trying to calm my rickety nerves. The answer as to how I felt was there somewhere, in the disorganised, curling folds of my brain. Or maybe (just maybe) it was hiding in the thundering thud of my heart? She agreed that I needed time to untangle the brambled mess I found myself in; if anything, for Lily, who was patiently awaiting my response. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
Adding to the muddled confusion I felt, I began to question whether my sexuality, which I had never felt concerned by, would be a problem. I always thought I was self-assured and confident in the fact I felt attraction for both/any gendered people. But there was a difference between being a bisexual woman in a vaguely mainstream cis/het relationship, and being a bisexual woman in a relationship with another woman. Lily knew how it felt to ‘come out’ in a public way, and her experience was not necessarily one of ease and joy. Most of the people I know share my values, but what about the wider world? The people I don’t know yet, future employers, my mildly observant catholic extended family. How might this impact my life?
The questions were endless, and there with so much at stake, not only for Lily and I, but the gargantuan ripples that might be caused by a fling gone wrong – or worse, a painful, heartbreaking end to what might have been a beautiful relationship – it could leave us both terribly damaged. And yet, I have loved Lily for a long time. She is one of the best people in the world. Could the universe be, right in that moment, weaving the most magical, whimsical love story for us both?
I’d love to tell you that there’s a happy ending. If we’re lucky, for us humans, life is long. It twirls and cascades, journeying us bumpily along cobbled paths, often outside of our control. For now, Lily has told me how she feels, and I do not underestimate the weighty privilege in her sharing with me her friendship, her love, and her desire. I want to do whatever is right, but I’m yet to sort through what that means. I will tell you this much though: a lingering current is reverberating through my bones, jostling me towards exploring whether a life with Lily by my side might be the happily ever after we both deserve.
