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A Greenhouse, a Goddess, and a Ghost
Rewriting My First Crush
When most of my friends share their hormonally-driven puberty stories (or adults share of their wild youth), I’m almost always slightly jealous. Not so much of the memories but the ability to have them. To even consider them as options.
They’ll tell me of happy memories with high-school sweethearts, making out with way too many people in their twenties, or their first crush experiences as little kids with no tinge of guilt surrounding them, and it’s weirdly beautiful. They tell me they were in love or they were a hot mess, and I’ll smile and hope they don’t ask me anything.
I had my first crush when I was about 9 or 10. A little light-skinned boy at church. When our children’s director hosted a youth & kids party at our house, my siblings and I went to it. He was also there.
Picture 30–40 super-sheltered, home-schooled kids & pre-teens eating all the snacks, hopped up on sugar, running up and down the stairs, watching VeggieTales. For many of us who only saw our siblings most days, it felt like heaven.
I gathered what little courage I had and blew kisses to him. He giggled and asked me to sit next to him on the couch. The woman hosting the party saw all of this and told me to go into the kitchen. She said “stay there” and called my parents. 15 minutes later, they showed up at her door, and they were angry. While my mother talked with the host, my father came in the kitchen and snatched me up. He dragged me from the kitchen, past the stairs, and through the living room. For about two weeks afterward, I had an imprint on my right shoulder. It was from his wedding band.
A couple kids snickered under their breath, “Ooooh, Miyah’s in trouble.” But the majority? Well, the rest of them were doing what my younger sister once trauma-joked was “assuming the position.” They were all sitting quietly around the living room, stone faced, their eyes staring intently at the floor. You see, they didn’t want to get punished also, and in our church, any adult could whoop you not just your parents. No-one looked at me with sadness, empathy, or understanding. They didn’t want that smoke.
Once outside, my mother said “Get in the car.” No joy, no warmth in her voice. Just a steely command: get in the car. I got in the van and closed the sliding door. They both took turns yelling at me on the way home and took turns beating me when we got home. My older brother (19), who had stayed home from the party, told me they whooped me for around an hour.
I didn’t have another crush until I was 23. I told my best friend, Gaia, at the time (ironically, a crush that I was actively repressing because she was my only local friend, in a serious relationship with someone she adored, and I wasn’t out at all) that I liked him and couldn’t be his friend. I’ll always love her for encouraging me to give him a shot and talk to him.
For the most part, though? If I even thought there was a spark of some feeling, a little thought of “this person’s really cute,” and there was a possibility of it going somewhere, I’d get panicky whenever they were around, heart pounding out of my chest, and feel like I was in actual danger. So, I’d dump cold water on the friendship and run.
Hyping friends up with lots of compliments and food? Sure. Playful flirting that would never lead anywhere? I could do that. Actually liking someone? No way in hell. The first time I kissed my husband, it was specifically in his car so people couldn’t see. I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t want anyone to witness it. I couldn’t explain why. I didn’t even know why. My brain wouldn’t make the connection until my late 20s, but my body knew. My body had internalized that liking someone, and specifically, showing them I liked them would end in pain.
I’ve always wished I could rewrite that experience for 9, 10-year-old Miyah. I’d take a crush somewhere pretty and public, hold their hand, ramble about how cute they were, blow them kisses or give them a short, sweet peck. That I could show that little girl, “Hey, you can like someone and find them cute and show them that without being beaten for it.” That I could give 9, 10-year-old Miyah a first crush experience that wouldn’t end in violence. Won’t ever happen, but it’s a bittersweet dream.
And yet, somewhere between a greenhouse and a goddess, I got close.
She looked like a Greek Goddess when I first met her. Three kids and several years later, she’s still fucking gorgeous. Gaia and I had been “pick up where we left off” friends for a little more than a decade. Gentle. Careful. Both of us (eventually) married, both of us queer, both of us not knowing the other had a crush way back when. And both of us carrying old church bruises in hidden places. You know the kind. The ones that don’t show up in photographs but still sting when you stretch too far.
Our friendship bloomed quickly, like dandelions in a kid’s backyard. Sudden, bright, and near-impossible not to notice. (Narrator voice: We did not notice the googly eyes.) I made her food; she drove me to work. We shared hard feelings, companionship, and laughter. Conversations that drifted from gardening to poetry to the edges of the tension neither of us would acknowedge.
Until one day, we did. Found out we were both polyamourous, queer, and open to exploring. Traded “I never knew”s and “You’re so hot”’s and “I can’t believe you found me cute.”s I planned our first (and only) date. Just the two of us. It was my first queer date; it was not hers.
I took her to the local conservatory greenhouse on a snowy Sunday. Blizzard outside and rainforest inside. I researched and asked queer friends about their experiences there. I wanted to make it healing for both of us not add more trauma.
It smelled like new growth in there. Like things deciding they were allowed to reach toward the light. (I’m a poetic gay so the symbolism was top-notch.) We walked slowly down the rows, brushing fingertips across ferns and flowers, occasionally brushing against each other.
I remember thinking that if I never touched her again, I would still carry the ghost of this 30 minutes in my bones. My inner child already knew what this was. This was safety. This was softness. This was what it could’ve felt like when I was ten if the world hadn’t punished me for it.
I asked only one condition: that both our partners not be present for that first kiss, and that it belong to only us. They both agreed.
When the first kiss happened, it wasn’t dramatic. No fireworks. No swelling music. Just a soft question. A giggly leaning in. A stillness.
Pure, unfiltered queer joy.
I think a lot about queer joy. About the ways it often flickers, instead of burns. How sometimes it’s a single candle lit in a blackout, not a pride parade. How it often needs to be kept secret which makes it seem shameful. Less than. Able to dismiss easily. Sometimes it’s a shared glance over coffee, or a greenhouse kiss that never turns into anything more.
And yet, that flicker is sacred.
We live in a world that loves to flatten queerness into two extremes: tragedy or hyper-sexuality. You’re either doomed to die alone, or you’re reduced to a kink, an experiment, a phase. But queerness? Real, full-bodied, heart-wide queerness? It’s so much more than that. It’s friendship that becomes old memories. It’s laughter that turns into looms. It’s being seen, really seen, and knowing you’re not alone.
Queer joy is radical because it insists on existing even when the world says it shouldn’t. It’s soft hands and chosen families. It’s stitching poetry over wounds. It’s writing yourself back into your own story. It’s understanding some moments are not either failed romance or ghosted friendship, but simple, beautiful stops along a healing journey. Reclaiming the part that was stolen and planting something tender in its place.
I didn’t get to be a lovestruck kid giggling with another kid on the couch without consequence. I didn’t get high school dances or secret kisses behind the gym. I didn’t get the long-term polycule that time (mostly because I’m *all of this*. Too intense. Too emotional. Too prone to poetic waxing about “possibilities” instead of realizing I’ve been ghosted lol.)
But I got to hold Gaia’s hand in a greenhouse, and for a moment, I got to rewrite the narrative. I got to tell my inner child: “See? It’s okay now. You’re allowed to feel this.”
This isn’t to stir anything up. They wanted sex not deep relationships or a fairytale family I made up in my head. I get that. No hard feelings on my end. Just love & letting go.
And maybe that’s the most honest ending I can give this story.
No fanfare. Just a quiet kind of magic. A quiet exhale that never got to bloom but still left pollen on everyone who touched it. If this is how it ends, let it be with the cherished memory of a garden and a goddess, with light filtering through the leaves and nervous laughter lingering in the air.
Two women standing among the plants, reaching for the sun, and the little girl who got to feel an innocent crush without fear.
