Leaning into my queer identity has changed how I feel about my body, parent my children, and view community

• I'm queer and fat, and sometimes I feel pressure to wear things I don't want to, like heels.
• I've identified as queer for almost a decade, but my life was very straight until two years ago.

I'm fixating on what I'm going to wear to an event in a few days. I have a few options lined up, and when I start surveying which shoes I'll wear, my mind keeps swimming around the words "have to" and "heels."

I am queer, and I am fat. But sometimes I feel pressured to present as hyperfemme even when I know that doesn't reflect who I am. I don't want to wear stilettos; I want to wear my combat boots with the dress I've picked out. "Wear whatever you feel best in," my partner tells me. He's right.

The event we're attending that weekend is a queer space. This fact helps me divest from the idea that there are things I should be wearing and instead wear what makes me feel inside my body.

I don't want to wear heels because "I should," and I certainly don't want to wear heels in order to make myself more palatable as a fat person. But if I'm being honest, if the event had been in a predominately heteronormative space, I would have leaned harder toward heels and most likely chosen them begrudgingly.

In the end, I chose the outfit that offered me the most gender and style euphoria, knowing that where I was headed felt good and safe enough to do so.

I'd been living a very straight life

While I've identified as queer for nine years, I haven't existed in predominantly queer spaces, relationships, or friendships until almost two years ago. While I might have publicly said my sexual orientation is queer, I was married to a straight cisgender man, and my life was very straight — everything from my friends to the art I hung on my walls.

I felt smaller, and while some of that smallness was self-inflicted, it was absolutely a byproduct of living in a heteronormative world.

My queerness has brought me and my kids into a tight and loving community

Now my partner and my tight-knit friend group are queer. These are the people I gather with often, but specifically once a month for Big Queer Dinner, driven by our love of food and community.

This also means my young children have their own experiences in the queer community and the ways in which we show up for one another. We joke that we all co-parent my kids — I'm the only parent of our group thus far — and while we have a laugh, it's true. They are my chosen family, the folx I call first, the people who snuggle my kids and celebrate their birthdays with me. My children get a close-up look at what queer love looks and feels like, and it has become the rule instead of the exception.

None of this is to say that closeness and intimacy or style euphoria or feeling grounded can be accessed only through queerness. This isn't an implication that straight people are unable to access community the way I do now but my own testament of how living queer has provided me a brand-new lens.

Becoming explorative in my queerness has brought in more queer friendships, love, and community — and a lot of Big Queer Joy.