Butch Femme Diaries 01- Lesbians Stay In

I used to think memory was made of the important moments. The older I get, the more I think a life is mostly built in the spaces between them. The majority of our lives, no matter how “important” we end up being, will be here. Regardless of how many degrees I get, how much money I make, how many accomplishments I tick off, I will live most of my time on earth folding clothes and making dinner with Anna, cleaning up after the people I love, grocery shopping, sitting on the couch after a long day, and doing all the small, ordinary things that somehow become a life.

A kitchen glowing red at the end of the day. Strawberries dipped in chocolate. Popcorn cracking against the lid of a pot. Her moving through a room that, for this brief period of our lives, we get to call ours. There is nothing remarkable about this evening except that it happened, that we were here for it, and that for a few quiet hours our lives overlapped exactly like this. And I think there is something especially beautiful about that, sometimes even more beautiful than the extraordinary moments.

I love the way everything looks under dim, red and orange light. Maybe because I have spent so much of my life believing that everything had to be bright enough to be seen, or being forced into spotlights I never asked for. Now, I find something comforting in the shadows. In the soft red glow filling the kitchen. In the corners left dark. In a home that doesn't ask me to be anything other than myself.

There is something about creating this kind of light that feels like creating a kind of safety, too. A little world we can soften at the edges. A place where the outside world can stay outside for a while. Where the doors close, the lights go low, and I can breathe. With no one else around besides Anna and our lovely cats.

For the first time, I have a home that feels like somewhere I am allowed to be completely at ease. Not because it is perfect, or because nothing difficult happens here, but because it is ours. Because the person I love is in the next room. Because I know the sounds this house makes at night. Because I know where everything belongs. Because, slowly, this place has become somewhere my body understands as safe.

And maybe that is what I want to remember most. Not just the big things we do here, but the feeling of being here. The quiet. The warmth. The low light. Her laughter from the other room, the warmth of her body beside mine, the feeling of her touch lingering on my skin. The cats padding across the floor and purring in my lap. The ordinary, beautiful fact that this is my life.