love, rosie | ✓

IT IS NOT EASY

Everyone does it — correction, almost everyone does it; straight people usually don't have to do it really (since that was the norm); then there were people who were still figuring themselves out as for Jisoo.

Jisoo didn't even know where to begin.

Deep down she knew that it wasn't always just men and women; it's also men and men, women and women, donkeys and dragons (that thought put a smile on her face). And deep down she knew that it wasn't just black and white, this and that.

She still wasn't sure though, she didn't know much about what she was going through. She was scared to talk to her older brother about it, what more her father.

She had no idea what to do, so maybe she should talk to somebody who knew such thing, somebody who had gone through the same thing she did.

So there she was with Lisa and Jennie, in one of Victoria's beaches, binoculars in her hand as they were whale watching. She had been trying to find a way to ask the question that she never really could answer by herself.

"So, how did you know?"

"Huh?" Lisa dumbly asked, since obviously she had no idea what the question pertained.

"Be more specific, Chu." Jennie encouraged with a smile.

Jisoo continued to fiddle with the hem of her sweater, she breathed out to at least try to get her beating heart to calm down, but to no avail the anxiety had made a home out of her chest and she was certain that this would only get worse until she'd be able to speak about what had been bothering her.

She released another breath.

"How did you know you're not straight?"

A thoughtful pause had passed along the three of them, the only thing that could be heard were the sounds the seagulls were making as they searched for something by the shore, something to eat, then the waves crash against the shore and they flew up above back into the horizon.

Jisoo felt rather melancholic as she watched that unfold.

What if the seagulls were her brother and father, and her truth was the waves, as soon as it crash by the shore they would fly away?

She clenched her jaw and balled her hands into fists.

She could only wish, wish that they'd accept her, they'd understand. Sometimes she felt like such an anomaly, she tried to fix herself, but it never really felt right. This was right, who she was, but there was that nagging feeling that would never go away until she'd wholly accept it, and it felt like she couldn't really do that unless her brother and father would too.

That was why she really could not accept it, that perhaps she wasn't as straight as she proclaimed to be (or that she wasn't straight at all).

"I always knew...it was just there. The matter of accepting it is the question," Lisa began, "I know mum and dad will accept me, but everyone else— I don't think they will. It feels so wrong though for me to hide it so I was like 'fuck it, I'm gonna be myself'..."

Now Jisoo wished she could be like Lisa, but it wasn't that easy, as much as she wanted to instill it in her mind that the way other people perceive her didn't matter as long as she was happy, it just wouldn't.

Nothing was easy. Honestly.

"For me, I kind of knew when I realized how much—" Jennie could not really express herself so she motioned towards Lisa.

Normally Jisoo would have had teased Jennie for saying something so cheesy (it always had been so difficult to put a pass on doing that) but she was too preoccupied with her thoughts and the dread deep within her soul.