Work Text:
Day 30 — Full Circle | hopeful
June 30th
To the person I was a year ago —
I don't know exactly where you are right now. Probably in your dorm room, probably arguing with yourself, probably rehearsing something. You were always rehearsing, back then — the speech to your mum, the reason you didn't go to the march, the careful explanation for every avoided thing. You were the world's most competent avoider of yourself.
I want to say: it gets better. And it does — I'm not lying, it does — but I don't want to tell you it like it's a thing that happens to you. It happens because you do things. Terrifying things, mostly, that are small from the outside.
You tell your mum. You don't use the speech.
You make friends who become something closer than that. You find out that being found — that having people who see the whole of you and don't flinch — is one of the better things in a life.
You go to Pride. You hold a flag. You cry a little, which you will never admit to anyone, but I'm telling you now because it's fine. It's fine to cry at belonging.
You figure out that the label you had wasn't quite the whole picture, and you don't fall apart about it. You just update. You learn that identity is a living thing, not a form you fill out once and submit.
I should tell you something about Arthur, but I'm not sure you'd believe me. You're currently at the stage where he's the worst person at Camelot University. I will say: you have a flat together, and there is an ongoing argument about the dishwasher, and you have never been happier about anything.
I should tell you about Gwen, who is going to be your armour-friend. About Elyan, who will tell you the truth when you need it. About Gwaine, who will notice when you're making yourself small and refuse to let it slide. About Freya, who will sit in silence with you on the bad nights and whose silences are never empty. About Lance, who will be the most quietly honest person you've ever known. About Percy, who you will refer to as "Gwen's long-distance rugby player boyfriend" for three months before being corrected. About Gaius, who will be the unexpected thing.
I should tell you about the community you were afraid to claim. The people who held it through the years before you, who made it possible for you to walk into a march and hold a flag and cry privately and belong. They were here before you. You are here now. Someone behind you is watching from a safe distance, the way you did, the way we all did.
The letter doesn't have to be happy, I said to myself when I started writing. It just has to be honest.
Here is the honest thing: there was a year when you found out who you were, and the finding out was hard, and it was also the best thing. Not despite the hard parts. Not in spite of them. With them, and through them, and at the end of them, something real.
You are gay, and maybe more than that, and still figuring it out, and that is not a contradiction — it is just how it is. You are loved by people you chose, who chose you back. You are standing at the end of June holding a flag you earned.
You are going to be fine.
Come and find us when you're ready. We'll be right here.
— Merlin
P.S. — The duck won, but the date was excellent. You'll see.
[ End of Thirty Days of Light ]