Imaginary Tails
By Lauren Pankretz
I open my eyes to a new world. Everything sparkles where the light can reach and bubbles float upwards, the air inside looking to rejoin the life of the land. I swim down, my imaginary tail propelling me farther into my imagination. I remember it feeling magical. Me and my childhood best friend, Natalya, would run outside in our swimsuits and create a magical world that we would play in for hours. The pool in my backyard made a perfect template for adventures like these. With a stone structure big enough to have a cave, waterfall, and slide, it was magical enough to fuel our active imaginations. When I remember the way the waterfall would come cascading down over the cave and slide, I feel light, like I could swim with my tail again. Natalya and I would play carefree games as beautiful mermaids and we were always on a new, exciting quest. However, the games always ended the same, with us getting married to our “oh-my-goodness” handsome boyfriends. All our games ended that way or were shaped around romance, even the out-of-water ones.
She and I were what some would label as “boy crazy,” but I really think we just wanted something like the love we saw in movies. All of my favorite movies exemplified this perfect love that we dreamed of. The Little Mermaid, Anastasia, The Swan Princess, Shrek, and more plastered the idea that happily ever after was finding a boy and marrying them. On top of that, me and Natalya were both from Queen Creek, Arizona. This cute little town just happened to be incredibly populated by devoted Christians and Mormons, two religions that encourage getting married and having kids to attain eternal salvation. Pretty much- We were two little girls that were hyper focused on finding what everyone told us would make us happy. A husband and kids. Being from that little bubble, I did not know anything outside of what was normalized in Queen Creek. Then one day when I was almost 11 years old my parents told me and my siblings we were moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The change in location would, unbeknownst to me, grow me into someone I could never dream up; someone little me didn’t even know could exist.
The only previous experience I had ever had with New Mexico was visiting my grandparents in Los Lunas over summer or winter breaks, so the first day of school in Albuquerque shocked me. I had to begin the swim outside of my imagination because my little bubble from Arizona had begun to shrink. The kids in this new school did not care about swear words or waiting to date. They were nothing like my home. Pretty soon I had learned all sorts of new things from my new best friend, Alex, who lived down the street from me. She once demonstrated how sex works using barbie dolls to my poor 11-year-old self. She taught me what the word lesbian meant when another kid from our class called me one (I cried, which is hilarious). Thinking back, Alex was a catalyst for change in my life. She showed me the shore I never saw above the waves before. At that moment, I feel like I was Ariel before she saw Prince Eric for the first time; always looking at ships and exploring shipwrecks but never going on land.
I remember one conversation I had in 7th grade. I was walking home with my friend, Arieana, after school. At school, it seemed like, almost every girl I knew was suddenly bisexual or lesbian, Alex included. These terms were still newer to me, and I didn’t understand why my friends would want to be attracted to girls, especially when at my house that was looked down on, so my confusion took shape in the form of our conversation. We usually took the arroyo and entered my house through the back door, but on that day, we walked over the bridge and towards the stoplight. It was as we were walking by the titanium railing I said the only phrase I can remember from that conversation, “I don’t care what people choose to like or be, but in my mind, homosexuality is a sin”. Back then I was choosing to be hyper religious and ignore everything that was telling me that what my parents said, wasn’t necessarily true. This was a way to cope with the changes in my life, by choosing to stay in my past, in my pool of imagination. But nonetheless, the pool started getting thicker and darker. It started to become hard to swim deeper and my lungs began calling for air.
In quick breaths of air, I began breaking the rules of my religion and the rules of my imagination, going off the track of “happily ever after”. Still, in 9th grade, although swearing and dating were off my list of “do not” and on my list of “do-ing”, I was deep in my bubble. Sometimes I don’t know how I didn’t know I was into women earlier. Thinking back now, I had a crush on multiple girls in middle school and I had a huge crush on my close friend from freshman year. Her name was Hailey and I loved when she gave me hugs. She once told me I gave off “gay vibes” and got all our friends to agree, and I, stupidly, couldn’t hide the elation I felt from that comment. It was the summer after 9th grade when I finally thought “Huh, maybe I shouldn’t have liked those hugs so much”. That wasn’t the exact thought, but one thing led to another, and I ended up asking Hailey how she knew the difference between recognizing a woman as pretty verses finding a woman as attractive. To be blunt, her advice didn’t help at all, and I ended up putting it mostly behind me because it didn’t fit the “happily ever after” scheme inside my head. I wasn’t looking for an Erica, I was looking for an Eric; someone that would make my parents and God happy.
With that, I began 10th grade and met Zach. Zach was the kind of guy that was friends with everybody because he was so charismatic, and although he wasn’t conventionally attractive, he had this safeness to him that made me feel comfortable. I told him everything, I trusted him. I considered him my first “real” love. However, the only thing real about it was that he took my virginity and left after a month. Thinking back on it, I never loved him. I’ve never been in love with anyone, but I wanted so badly to have true love with him. That “happily ever after” dream resided with him when he persuaded me to let him have sex with me. Younger me didn’t expect him to leave so fast. That was when my bubble popped, but in a weird way I was still underwater, searching for a man to fill the hole that Zach had left with me. So, in the murky water, I swam through men, wanting validation, wanting one of them to tell me I wasn’t just someone they could leave and never look back on. Then ironically, one of those men introduced me to the first woman that solidified my place in the queer community. Although there is not much I remember about that night, I remember her. I remember pulling her close in the park, wanting so badly to kiss her. I remember kissing her and my hands around her waist, pulling her in for more. I remember how she was addicting and sweet and I couldn’t get enough of her. The words “this is what I want” echoed in my head as I tuned out the boys in the front seat and focused on her. The next morning, I woke up officially “bisexual” in my book. Two or three months later I had my second experience with a girl, Tahny. I’ve never had feelings for someone the way I have feelings for her. She is the closest I’ve ever been to feeling in love with someone. That night, we danced to the song Whiskey Glasses and she made me laugh uncontrollably. A smile was always glued onto my face around her, she gave me such a giddy high. It broke my heart when she chose a man over me.
I couldn’t decide which girl brought me to shore, activated my need for change. Which girl was my Erica? But when I thought about it, neither were. It was me who finally decided to love myself. It was me who motivated myself to grow a pair of legs and stop living in my imagination. It was me, after my last time having sex with a man, that looked in the mirror and accepted, “I didn’t like that. I’ve never liked that”. It was me going to my best friend Arieana, the same one from 7th grade, and saying, “I only want validation from men, I am not attracted to them”. Then seeing how everyday when I meet a man, I think about what they think of me, not what I think of them.
And when I look at women and become flustered to the point I become speechless, when my heart beats faster because a girl is near me being beautiful in her own right, even when I’m scrolling through TikTok and watch one video ten times because women, I realize I’ve never looked at men that way, and I likely never will. Finding the love for myself showed me that love is beautiful no matter who I’m attracted to. It’s okay to be who I am with whoever loves me for me. Nowadays, I don’t go swimming very often, and when I do, I don’t find myself swimming down anymore. I dunk my head underwater and watch the bubbles float upwards, my eyes begin to sting, and I join them. I don’t miss the underwater because the sunlight sparkles much more vibrantly above. The way it hits the water and reflects; the way the leaves on trees flash from light to dark; the way it’s warm on my skin. I don’t miss the imaginary tail, it is so much freer to run than swim, and so much more fun to dance with gravity than to twist in the water. I was meant to love women the same way I was meant to be born with legs, and I’ve made that choice to stop wishing to be different.
Leonardo Magazine 