Woman Heals Self-Esteem Through the Powers of FRIENDSHIP and LESBIANISM
Back in June, I set myself a challenge. A little experiment. After my lesbian awakening had put me through the ringer and taught me some valuable lessons about where I should invest my energy, I took stock of where I was at in my life and realised: all my good friends, all the people who love me, liked me from early on. Even when I was shy and awkward and still in the process of becoming. The people who liked me, liked me from the start. Following that logic, I wondered what would happen if, when I had the opportunity to get to know someone new, I showed up as my full, unfiltered self, right from the beginning. And thus, the experiment was born.
It was a series of choices. I let myself be talkative, let myself share unrelated anecdotes without worrying that I was being annoying. I let myself send voice messages instead of carefully polished texts. I let myself be philosophical and rambling and say all the thoughts in my head. Let myself be an excitable puppy whenever I had the opportunity to talk to a person I liked. It wasn’t a test for someone to pass; it was a way of rerouting back to myself. Of testing the hypothesis that if someone is going to like me, they will like me for my imperfect, unfiltered self.
I forgot about the experiment, but the experiment didn’t forget about me. Unbeknownst to me, it had changed the way I see the world. I became the kind of person who reaches out first, who openly shows affection, who shares my passions and thoughts and opinions. Who can navigate social gatherings with relative ease. A handful of choices I made way back in June transformed me into someone confident, and it had ripple effects throughout other areas of my life. My relationship to my PhD research changed. I let myself feel all the emotions, the anger and frustration and compassion, the sense of powerlessness that often accompanies trying to do good in the world. It turned out that messy, imperfect, unfiltered Eliza is so much better at being a person that her tamed counterpart.
The experiment found its way back to me on Sunday. A quiet presence, tap tap tapping at my side. Soft and gentle, like a hand on my shoulder, pointing out the obvious: I’m not shy anymore. Perhaps I should have realised earlier. It’s been a month of social gatherings, of getting to know friends of friends, of being at ease in the company of strangers. I spent so much of my life thinking I was introverted, when really, I was just anxious. I love being around people, I love talking, and with the right people it feels so easy. But accepting that I’m (it feels weird even suggesting this) likeable means rewriting the story I have told myself for the past 27 years.
Sometimes I make an offhand comment to my friends about how I have no social skills, and they’re always confused. Because I’m repeating a story from before they knew me. No one else knows the stories I believe about myself. It’s not written on my forehead that I’m unlikeable or awkward or too much. People only know I’ve internalised those beliefs if I tell them. And I don’t have to tell them.
The Great Lesbian Awakening of March 2025 was a watershed moment in the Eliza history books. It required me to be selfish; it required me to be brave. For the first time in my life, I fully chose myself. Chose my own potential, my own needs and desires. I chose the possibility of a life that I had to believe existed. At the time, I felt like I was dying. Yet 90 percent of my social anxiety disappeared after coming out as a lesbian. I became outgoing and talkative and bold.
This is new territory for me, trusting that people will like me for who I am. I see the evidence before my eyes, and my brain still tells me to doubt it. I am wrapped in a cosy quilt of green flags, and the voice in my head insists that I must be colourblind. Because surely it’s too good to be true, that you reach a certain point in your life and you outgrow your demons? Did I outgrow them, or sacrifice them? I sacrificed conformity, I sacrificed the path I had committed to for years. And maybe there is a reward on the other side of that. Maybe all the things I hope for are within reach.
I wrote a list shortly after the Great Lesbian Awakening, of non-negotiable qualities I look for in a partner. I’ve only made one change to the list in the months since. Amended “someone in academia who understands this side of me” to “someone who understands why my research is important to me”, because, frankly, I spend enough time around academics. What I really need is to be with someone creative. Perhaps that it my main non-negotiable. I looked at the list today for the first time in months, and realised my life is filled with people who have all these qualities. Shared values, shared ethics, shared interests. People who show up for me, who go above and beyond for me. I look at all these traits that I dreamed up at a point in my life where I desperately needed to cling onto hope, and now I know they’re real. There are people who are creative and fun and kind, who are also reliable and mature and emotionally intelligent.
Perhaps the greatest change in me this year is that I’m learning to find joy in being seen. I hold court at a friend’s party, reading astrology charts and telling stories. Everyone goes quiet and listens attentively when I talk about my research. I am seen in all my shades. My humour, my flamboyance, my sense of justice. I get to be everything at once. I bake a cake for another friend, and remember that I feel most like myself when I’m feeding the people I care about. I reunite with a friend after 5 months apart. The last time she saw me was before my breakup. I am a different person now, bright and sparkly. I am filled with an incredible lightness. There are so many kinds of love to learn, and they’re all interconnected. The love you have for your friends shapes the way you love yourself. If all these beautiful people can love you, that must mean you’re worth loving.
I look at the incredible friendships I have, and rewrite the doubts I have about finding romantic love. I consult my council of queers, sending lengthy voice notes trying to decipher whether someone was flirting with me. I take their advice with a heavy pinch of salt, but two threads of hope burn within me. The hope that they are right, and the hope that comes from knowing I’m loved. My friends don’t doubt that someone would flirt with me, because they don’t look at me through the critical eye that I perceive myself with. They see the good in me, and assume that others will too. I think of the way my friends see me, and I rewrite another story. I am no longer defined by all the years of men making me feel inferior. I am allowed to consider the possibility that a woman was flirting with me. The voices in my head are still like “oh my god, Elizaaaa, you can’t say that!!! You can’t just admit that it’s within the realm of possibility that someone would find you attractive, god!!”. I rewrite the story nonetheless, throwing the voices in my head, kicking and screaming, into the pits of hell where they belong.
I am a deeply unsubtle person. I can either be silent, make myself invisible and slowly wither away – as I did for years. Or I can be loud and vibrant, knowing that I will be seen for exactly what I am, in all the awkwardness of wanting. I am learning to make myself visible again. I buy red lipstick for the first time in years. I wear sparkly purple earrings and cover my fingers in eclectic rings. My magpie brain is determined to be as shiny and sparkly as possible. I let myself flirt shamelessly, even though I promised myself I’d be a good girl and do no such thing. But it’s so easy to slip into the performance of it all, the wicked look in my eye and the teasing tone of my voice, moulding new meanings from a language I’m still learning to speak. It is a performance in the same way my femininity is. Completely natural, completely me, yet embedded with the desire to show off, to be seen in all my sparkles.
Being seen means allowing yourself to be seen in your wanting. This is the part I still struggle with. I don’t do subtlety, as we’ve established. I possess an incurable earnestness and I wear my heart not on my sleeve but on my face. As a queer woman, the relationship between visibility and wanting is even more complex. The fear of being seen as predatory. Even with other queer women. I am so new to all of this; I still feel like a fraud when I tell people I’m a lesbian. Even though it is the truest part of me. It would be so easy to hover on the sidelines; to let the months and years slip by and repeat the lifelong narratives of being unwanted, undesirable. It would feel less awkward than risking rejection. Reject myself, reject my own potential before anyone else has the chance. But I’m not that person anymore.
I feel younger at 27 than I did at 23 or 24. I am no longer shackled to the heterosexual timeline that says women expire by a certain age. I get to be wacky and whimsical and exist at my own pace. For the first time in my life, I feel like I fully belong to myself. Each time I uproot a story of unworthiness, years of my life are returned to me. I can dream bigger dreams now, envision a future where I am loved exactly as I need to be.
There is a conversation I have with my friend from time to time, about how we are both over-givers. Pouring and pouring ourselves into others, overcompensating. Always the planner, always the one who puts in effort. Never able to rest because if you don’t take care of everything, who will? The first blog I wrote post-breakup/lesbian awakening was on this topic. About neediness vs. having needs. There are many traits I look for in a girlfriend, but ultimately I want to be with someone who puts in the same kind of effort that I do. Someone who pays attention to detail, who is organised and conscientious. Someone mature and responsible, so I don’t have to shoulder this burden for the both of us. I want someone creative and funny and whimsical and cute, but these traits must exist alongside self-awareness and responsibility. Sometimes I think I’m unrealistic for believing qualities like this could coexist alongside each other. But I’ve rewritten that story too. Perhaps the real reason I feel younger now than I did in my early twenties is that I keep meeting people who change my perspective on the world. I meet people who show me everything I believe in is possible. When I meet people who make my world brighter, I am so glad that my shyness has faded. That I can tune out the noise in my brain and turn towards them as a sunflower turns to face the sun, breathing in their light.