The Words That Hurt Me

Nine Flowers

'Good. Again.' Mikey heaves a breath and gets back into position, thrusting his palm forward and stepping just as quick. Despite being eight, his little body moved with speed, if a bit clumsy in action.

Upon finishing the moves, he kept position, waiting for his next order. They had been drilling this particular set for awhile, as Mikey had been struggling with it before. Now he could do it backwards with his eyes closed.

'Good. You are dismissed.' The rat gazed on as Mikey visibly relaxed, putting his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Splinter walked by him, stopping to place a hand on his shell. 'Be sure to drink plenty of water once you've recovered. And eat some food too.'

The boy nodded, 'Hai, Sensei.'

.

"Wait, so Pansexual means 'attracted to all and Bisexual also means 'attracted to all'?" Mikey scratched his head.

"Well, technically, Bisexual means both, but recently we've drifted from that definition," This answer didn't help Mikey.

Waking up this morning from a restless sleep, the ninja resolved to try and fix everything as fast as possible. Shoving aside his dreams of Splinter, he opted to focus on the love side of his issues. So he weighed his options.

A) he could talk to his brother's, but risk telling them about his crush prematurely. (He was in no way ready to tell his family right now.)

B) consult any of his human or formerly human friends, and undoubtedly have them pry and accidently gossip about it.

Or C) talk to GB and circumvent all those issues, besides maybe having to say he has a crush on someone.

So, as on all tests, he chose C.

At first, he asked if they'd ever had a boyfriend. When they said they weren't attracted to men, Mikey asked for them to elaborate, which eventually led to their current conversation.

"'Drifted away'? So it used to mean both, but now it doesn't?" Mikey asked, turning back towards his drawing pad, writing a question mark in a blank area on the covered paper.

"Yeah, 'cause gender's fluid, right? People expanded the definition to be less transphobic," GB answered, the clacking of knitting needles heard over the line, "But the way I've seen people define it before, is bisexual meaning you feel attracted to people in different ways, and in pansexuality, gender isn't a factor at all,"

"Oh! Okay, that makes more sense," the turtle erased the question mark.

Honestly, Mikey wasn't aware of LGBT stuff before, it just never crossed his mind that he should care. Thinking back, however, he had seen many more 'straight' relationships than any kind of anything else.

"Why is there so many different words? Like, isn't lesbian and gay the same thing?" He scribbled on the sketch pad, forming a little turtle friend from the pencil.

"Hmm, yes? I mean, lesbian is used to describe women who are attracted to women, but one could just use gay if they wanted," the clacking stopped, "I do get wanting a specific word for yourself, though,"

"Mmm, yeah. It easier to say it one word," Mikey carefully dragged the pencil over his drawing, adding thin lines to the shell.

"Yeah, there's also, like, a lot of history I don't know about for those words, so," They took a sip of their drink, "there's that, but sometimes it can get super complicated. 'Cause some people need more than one to describe their experience,"

Mikey hummed, shading his turtle.

"Like, I joke about my gender being everything and nothing, but I just don't have the experience of gender other people do. I can most closely associate to women, but that's just 'cause I have a uterus and thus look like a woman. But would I say I'm a woman? No, probably not,"