The intensity of lesbian connection

It is 8:32 pm. Maybe I am feeling especially emotional because it is day two of my period. I wanted to watch a movie. Since realizing I am a lesbian I have noticed I cannot bear watching anything that is not about lesbians. My dilemma is there are only so many films about lesbians.

Most of them I do not feel really encapsulate how intense and intimate lesbian connection can be. Granted everyone’s experiences are different. So to each their own. But, I long to see a lesbian film that touches my soul. That every scene I feel the intimacy and intensity I dream of.

That I experience. I suppose I will just have to write my own film. Which I am scared of doing. I do not feel qualified for it. Especially considering the extent of my lesbian romantic experience is talking to one girl for a month.

Then not being able to talk to her for nearly three because her parents found out about us. I do not know how we will progress when she is back if we will progress at all. But, even in a month alone she really transformed me. There is a lot of jokes about U-Hauling. About lesbians moving super fast.

About things getting intense very quickly. In those jokes lies this collective grief though. Something many lesbians understand and share. This sense of isolation. Repression.

Shame. Fear. Trauma. In the shower today I thought about how for these past three months I have been unwell. There are many reasons for that, but a huge one is I am waiting to be able to speak to the girl I like again.

I realized I have spent all this time telling myself well once she is back I have so much to look forward to. Which I do. But, then I thought about how now that I know her, what would my life be like without her? I have two lesbian friends. But, we do not talk very often.

There are also things in friendship you simply cannot experience. Even though me and the girl I like are not dating, I shared parts of myself with her I never shared with anyone before. Really I did not even know those parts of me were there before I knew her. She wanted to know every facet of me. So did I.

I still do. She would not hold back in telling me her most intimate thoughts. I never had to guess what she was feeling and thinking. She would just tell me. I never doubted her feelings were true for me when I could speak to her.

She made it undeniable. Female friendships tend to be quite intimate already. But, the connection between two lesbians makes even the deepest female friendship feel almost shallow. There is an almost immediate camaraderie just from being women alone. Add both being lesbians there is this almost psychic understanding.

At least there was with her. Every time I come across another lesbian I wonder about how she feels when she is all alone. What she feels and thinks about each day. I wonder if she feels as deeply as I do. I wonder what her wounds feel like for her.

I wonder what she is like at her most true. Her most vulnerable. I wonder everything she has felt and thought about for another woman before. What thoughts and feelings she experienced that she would be ashamed to let anyone know of. Those are the first thoughts I have when I meet another lesbian.

In every word I share with them at the root is this longing to know these things. For her to share them with me. I could be saying nothing to do with any of those thoughts. But, that is what I am communicating at least energetically. A lot of lesbians are quite in tune.

I think even connected to each other in a spiritual way. Like we all share something innate in each other. Sometimes I think they feel this longing from me. Sometimes I think they share this longing too. That in the words they share maybe behind them is those same questions.

Even though when the girl I like first reached out to me, it was out of romantic interest for me, I think it was deeper than that. I think we saw ourselves in each other. We saw someone who shared our desires. Our longing. Our heart even.

I think we both felt this visceral need to speak to each other because we made each other feel truly seen. Something that when you are a lesbian you rarely feel. Straight people do not know what it is like tear up just at the thought of being able to love who you love. I watched two lesbian films in the past two days. Elisa and Marcela and Desert Hearts.

Desert Hearts I did not fully watch. I am too overwhelmed from this heat and my period that I just skipped to the most intimate scenes. I watched two women kiss. One of them leaning into a car window while it was raining. Kissing while the woman in the car hesitantly surrendered to her desire to kiss back.

They kissed and she told the woman to stop. The woman got in the car. The other woman told her to take her home. Straight people do not know what it is like to desire someone, but to be tainted with so much shame for it, that you do not allow yourself to experience it. To receive it. I watched how she slowly surrendered to her feelings even in her shame.

I watched how tenderly they kissed each other. Slowly. It reminded me of what it is like to try and eat while crying. The emotions are so strong you eat quite slowly. Taking breaks to digest your emotions.

At one point one of the women put her hand over her face while they were being intimate. She said I’m sorry. They stopped for a moment and then proceeded kissing after. I think I would feel that exact same way. I think the moment I am intimate with a woman I will probably cry.

Quite a bit. I will probably need to stop many times just to process what I am feeling and experiencing. While they were being intimate one of the women said I have never felt this way before. I watched this scene with tears almost filling my eyes. It is hard to really describe the lesbian experience.

At least I am struggling to. But, every single moment feels deeply emotional. Emotional in a way I have never experienced before. Especially when you never know if you will be torn apart because of the homophobic world we are living in. Harmed for being together.

Being intimate. Straight people do not carry that. I carry that. In every word I speak to her. In every desire I share with her.

Feel for her. I carry it when I think about how I can somehow spend time with her. How to be intimate without my parents realizing or suspecting something. How I do not know how they would react if they found out. If my extended family found out.

I carry it when I think about fascism growing worse and worse in my country. How reading queer history is feeling too close to home rather than being stories from the past. How I can watch a film about two lesbians in Spain in 1901 and relate to it in 2025. It is strange. I rather write than watch movies.

I am someone who has always loved movies. I am just tired of seeing straight people. I am tired of not seeing what it feels like to be a lesbian on screen. I am tired of not seeing what is possible for me to experience as a lesbian on screen. The closest I can get to that is just writing my own feelings.

So I do almost all the time. To experience what I long for and cannot find. On the bright side the lack of representation makes me feel like if I do create lesbian art, it will be cherished. Maybe even remembered. My favorite part about writing on Substack is how even the most strange and specific parts of me people manage to connect to.

It is so nice to know that not only am I not alone, but it is making a difference in the world for me to be myself. In each embarrassing, unconventional, and taboo detail. My favorite part about making art will always be how it allows me to really see myself. There is this quote I read that really spoke to me. “I love you with what in me is unfinished.

I love you with what in me is still changing”. I think that is what I am attempting to do through my art. To see myself in all my unfinished parts. In everything about me that is changing. To love who I am like an ongoing story.

To love myself like life itself. Without knowing what will happen next. What I will become. But, witnessing and cherishing my being while I am still breathing. I hope I will be able to love people in that same way. Maybe I will make art like that.

Art where two lesbians are vulnerable with each other. Are seen in everything that is unfinished and changing about them. Yet, they try to love each other anyways. They try to love each other because they want to. They see and care for each other.

They want to hold and nurture one another. No matter the outcome. They want to as long as they can. So maybe they do. Maybe it works out maybe it does not.

But, they will always have the tenderness they shared. I want to create that. I want to make something vulnerable and tender. Something that says something does not need to be perfect or last forever for it to matter. For it to mean the world to two people.