Welcome to the second edition of Into the A+ Advice Box, in which we answer advice questions from A+ members who submitted their questions into our A+ ask box because they wanted their questions answered in a space that is not accessible by Google, their mom, their ex, etc. (No guarantees regarding your ex, however). Previously, we have included such questions in our epic Some Answers to Some Questions You Have Been Asking Us, and in most cases that is still the plan. But some questions were a lot longer or more in-depth and deserved their own place in the sun.

We solicited answers from the whole team, so let’s dive in!

I know that this is THE OLDEST queer gal problem in the book and you might not even answer it bc of that, but I fell for a straight girl. one of my best friends. and I fell for her FIVE YEARS AGO. I mean, I figured out I was queer bc of her, you know? and because we’re only 21 we’ve changed like, a LOT since we were 15/16, but whaddayaknow she’s still wonderful and I’m just totally fucked. I feel trapped in this thing probably bc I never told anyone about it, ever, bc I was struggling (probs still am) with a lot of guilt and shame over it, not bc we’re girls but bc she’s one of my closest friends. I just don’t know how the fuck to process this but I don’t want to tell her or anyone else, really because my friendships are great and stable (I’ve known her and our other mutual friends since we were like 8 years old) and I’m really not feeling blowing that all up. But I’ve been trying to move on for like, at least 3 years now. Any advice for moving on(?) bc honestly there are times I wish I was just a different person because this is so. damn. tiring. PS ty and I love you all ohmygod, I have so much gratitude for what you do here. <3 <3 <3

Siobhan: So the standard answer here is to cut her out of your life but I totally get that you don’t want to do that and I don’t think it’s necessary. For some people it might be but you probably know if that’s you or not already and it’s obviously not an option considering the rest of your social situation. I think if you’re polyamorous inclined then the answer is slightly different than if you’re mono, but they both involve going out and dating and actively monitoring and catching yourself when you write off the person you’re with because they’re not Her. If you’re polyam inclined then you need to learn to live with and manage your feelings and come to peace with the fact that she isn’t inclined that way while dating other people and building the rest of your life up. If you’re mono then dating other people and getting to know whoever they are and working on that relationship is the way forward. A mutual relationship will eclipse a one sided one in time.

Casey: Oh dear, this is a classic for a reason, because it happens to so many of us. I agree with Siobhan, I don’t think you need to cut this person out of your life necessarily and only you will know if that’s what you really need to do. But maybe it would be good to just step back from your relationship with her for a while. It sounds like you have a rad old group of friends from when you were a kid, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make some new friends. Especially, new queer friends! Are there queer groups or sports teams at your college/LGBT community center/library/online that you could join to meet queer friends? It’d be great to get out there and spend a lot of time with some queer friends, for a couple reasons. One, some space from your friendship with your straight crush could cool the flames! For me, not seeing a crush helps kill the feelings. It doesn’t mean cutting her out of your life forever, just making hanging out with other people and doing activities without her a priority for a good amount of time (maybe like six months at least?). A lot of queer people get really involved with a group of queer friends after they come out, so I don’t think this would be weird to your old friends anyway. And it sounds like your friendships with them are solid enough that they’ll be there for you still if you back off for a while. Okay, and the second reason is that I think it would REALLY help to date someone else, and not seeing her but seeing a bunch of queer ladies instead is bound to lead to that. Ask your (new queer) friends to set you up! Sign up for online dating and message some people! If anyone else is interested in you, go on a date with them!

Faith: Ok, so imagine that the thought of cheesecake makes you drool. IT’S TOUGH BUT WORK WITH ME PLEASE. And there’s been a crazy delectable slice of cheesecake in your fridge for like a week. It has fucking brownies and caramel on it. And a label that says “Do Not Eat” then your dumb roommate’s name. But then one day you end up at a bakery you’ve never been to and they let you sample this pie that you’ve never tried before and turns out a rhubarb is the best thing you’ve ever eaten. And all of a sudden you’re like, “Wow, why was I ever pining for that cheesecake when there is a display case full of fresh and delicious and available pie here that I can eat without making stuff awkward at home? I’m lactose intolerant anyway!” Sometimes the idea of cheesecake is better than the cheesecake itself. It’s not worth the rumbly guts. Then you go home and there’s a bite taken out of the cheesecake but you don’t even care that much because your bakery is like “We make all this damn gay pie fresh every day AND there’s free wifi!” What I’m saying is check out some bakeries. Try the pie. Ala mode, even! Take a baking class so you can make your own pies! Ok that last one was bad and this metaphor is getting away from me.

I hate the suburbs and I have no queer community where I live and it’s sort of killing me but I love all the kids at work so much. The nannykid I watch on weekends tells his parents / grandparents / random strangers he sees on the street that I am his best friend. When he was sick and in the hospital his parents told me that the only places he wanted to go were home or to my house. He spontaneously hugs me and tells me he loves and misses me every Saturday. I hate most of my life here but I can’t leave my nannykid what do I do

Casey: Aw, your nannykid sounds so sweet and it totally makes sense that you feel such a strong bond with him that it would be really hard to stop being able to spend time with him and the other kids at your work. I’m curious to know what your living situation is: would it really be impossible to move into the city and still work where you currently work? Long commutes can be really tough, but if you’re as committed to and enthusiastic about your job as you seem to be, maybe you could make that work! And maybe living in a place that feels good would totally be worth it. There are some good strategies to make commuting doable (mine in the past have been gobbling up audiobooks). And you’d be commuting the opposite direction as everyone else! But maybe commuting to your job in the suburbs would be impossible. I’m also curious to know if you hate the suburbs​ ONLY because you have no queer community or if it’s for other reasons as well. To speak from my own experience, living in the city, even living in gayborhoods, doesn’t guarantee you a queer community. I currently live in Vancouver’s gay (guy) neighborhood and I don’t necessarily feel like it makes me a part of a queer community. It takes a lot of energy to put yourself out there and make queer friends, wherever you are. I’d hate to see you move to the city and still feel like you don’t have queer community. Maybe there ARE other queer people in the suburbs and you just haven’t met them! (I mean, one of our other questions is about someone buying a house in the suburbs and wanting to queer it up, so). Are there ways online (Facebook groups?) or otherwise to meet people who might be close-ish to where you are living now? If you haven’t already, I think it’s worth it to make a good solid effort to see if there are other queer folks in the suburbs. After all, you’re there right? And if you decide you need to leave the suburbs, and your lovely nannykid, it will be sad, but I think it will be worth it if you know that you need to leave for your own happiness and well being. After all, if living there is really making you unhappy, are you going to be the best nanny and child care giver for the kids you work with? That’s bound to leak into your work, and you don’t want to feel resentful at the kids you work with for keeping you somewhere you’re unhappy. You will have other jobs and meet other wonderful kidlings to care for that you will love and have just as much of an impact on, maybe more, than your current nannykid. Good luck!

I’m working round the clock to start a freelance transcription/copyediting/writing career and getting basically nowhere. How the fuck do people do this??? I feel like I’ve been putting myself out there forever and getting basically nothing in return. It’s taking a major toll on my stress level, self-esteem, and self-perception. Like I used to think I was a strong writer/editor… I rode that all the way to graduate school, and now I’m just not so sure. WHAT DO I DO

Siobhan: You’re going to hate this answer because we all hate this answer but it’s true. Pitch constantly and have patience. It took a year of pitching after my first lucky strike (a friend asked me to write something for Diva) before I got any more paid work as a writer. You want to be sending out at least one pitch a week to as many appropriate magazines as possible. Make an excel database of email addresses, magazines and subjects covered and use that. At the same time keep writing and get published with volunteer (i.e. unpaid) publications as often as you can to build your portfolio and improve your work. When you can’t find one of those to take whatever you’re working on put it on your blog and build your social media following. Its going to take you awhile to get established and you may always need to do some other work as well because frankly we live in a nightmare late capitalist economy where there isn’t enough money to go around if you aren’t sitting on stockpiles of it, but good luck, you can do this!

Kayla: I have been successfully freelancing full-time for three years now. One thing that has really helped me has been reaching out to other freelance writers. Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of comprehensive resources online for How To Make It In Freelancing (sure, there are advice articles, but I’ve never found one that radically improved my work life). Rather, I’ve learned from others. Sometimes, this can be a really competitive field, but you’d be surprised by how many writers are willing to provide guidance! I have been very fortunate to have lots of writer friends with a few more years experience on me, and I always go to them with questions or problems, because they usually have experienced something similar. I think this could particularly help with self-esteem issues. I’ve found that the best writers are usually very supportive of other writers. The same goes for hands-on editors. It’s good to pitch to as many places as possible, but if you work with an editor you really like, continue to foster that relationship. Don’t be afraid to reach out to editors about what they’re looking for. Twitter can be a very useful tool! Don’t ever pitch an editor on Twitter, but one trick I use often is searching “pitch me” in quotes on Twitter and then filtering the results by people I follow. Since I follow lots of editors, there are usually plenty tweets that come up from editors looking for specific types of writing. Pitch often. It’s my personal belief that you should avoid writing for free. I’ve managed to avoid doing it for my whole career (unless my tumblr/xanga/blogspot posts from back in the day count). I know plenty of great editors who are willing to take risks on unpublished writers (so long as the pitch is strong!). And so much of being successful at freelance writing is just writing ALL THE TIME, and spending time on writing something that’s unpaid cuts into time when you could be writing something that’ll get you paid. For me, that cost isn’t worth it. And this was something one of my aforementioned writer friends advised me about. So to bring it back to that: Find people who do what you do. As freelancers, we don’t get to surround ourselves with coworkers in an office environment every day (which I love tbh), but it can be isolating. Having mentors or writer friends makes everything a little easier and also gives you someone to commiserate over freelance taxes with, which is extremely important. (On that note, the only way to stay financially afloat as a freelancer is to stay very on top of your taxes.)

I kinda would like some advice. So, the college I go to is pretty small and isolated, with a very small queer community. My first year there, I ended up living in the LGBTQ+ dorm (there were only like 12 people who lived in it) for a few months before a Title 9 incident occurred in which I was the reporter and the reported was an older person who also lived in the dorm and was adored by the rest of the people who lived there. I, also, was the vice president for the council on campus that advocates for LGBTQ+ people on campus. When I switched dorms and the Title 9 investigation started, I got shunned from my old dorm, and wanted nothing to do with the toxic environment it fostered. After a few months on LGBT+ council, resigned, because I pissed the president off by telling him that if he wanted to create a safe space that he shouldn’t misgender people (There were like 5 people who regularly went). He went on to become the head of the LGBTQ+ event coordinators on campus. Literally, everything on campus that involves LGBTQ+ people, I have either pissed off the heads of, or are run by people that I was friends with, but helped foster a toxic environment in my old dorm that I didn’t want to be apart of. Do I just give up on doing queer shit with other people at my college, or hope that when I go get my teaching credential in a few years that I can have a fresh start?

Siobhan: This sounds horrible and I’m so so sorry you’re dealing with it. I think you have two options here. One is to say fuck it and wait for when you start on your teaching course and the other is to find alternative queer community. Your college is isolated, but is there a town nearish that you can get to without too much trouble? If so I would try finding queer community there (and off campus queer orgs are often better anyway). If not the internet is a great place to find other queers, especially one’s who have had similar experiences to you. Do not give up on queer community itself though! It’s truly awesome when it’s not run by toxic nightmare humans and there is one out there waiting for you.

Valerie Anne: Ugh, I’m sorry that happened to you. That all sounds awful. Can you start your own club? I don’t know how official school organizations work, but maybe it doesn’t have to be so formal. Pick something you’re passionate about, make up little fliers, and meet up in a coffee shop (a busy coffee shop, in the daytime) to talk about it. I was only peeking out the closet door in college, but one of the things that kept me from going to any kind of LGBTQ+ gather is that it always just seemed to be a generic “safe space” type of meet-up. Which is great! And so necessary. But was too open-ended to hook me. But I would have almost definitely gone to an event that was more specific, like “LGBTQ+ Buffy Chat” or “LGBTQ+ Club for People Who Know All the Words to Every Disney Song.”

I just bought a house in the suburbs and I feel like I’m selling out. There is a rather pretentious “lake”, an HOA and architectural guidelines. On the plus side it has a yard the is big enough to garden but not too big to take care of myself, it’s about the right size for 1-3 people and there are no mold or water issues. I’m trying to figure out how to queer it up. Right now the best I can think of is some subtle rainbow decorations and some flower boxes with full spectrum of flowers. I can’t repaint the fence or make any overly bold statements. It would also be nice to have something that can be visible during a cold and snowy Canadian winter.

Siobhan: Oh friend, may I suggest fairy lights? My parents have them outside their house and have never been accused of corrupting the neighbourhood so you have some plausible deniability there but we’ll all know. You can even get solar powered ones for environmental friendlyness, though you may want battery powered ones for the winter. I just did a quick google and these look pretty damn queer to me.

Also vegetable gardens and bird tables and other DIY environment loving things tend to be strong with the queer community. I think if you pick lots of things that by themselves aren’t overtly queer and just put them all together you’ll ping nicely without giving any bigots/home owners associations something concrete to point at.

Faith: Two words: Lawn flamingos.

Hi! I have a question for any of the witches in the house. I have a sister who is going through some hard times emotionally, and while she’s getting the help she needs, I feel a little helpless. Are there any spells or other type of practice that I could use to send her some good energy? Thank you!

Mey: Hey! So, first of all, that sucks and I really hope that things get better soon. Here are a couple things I’d suggest. I love candle magic, and while I don’t know exactly what’s going on, I’d probably go and buy a red candle (for love and strength), a light blue candle (for healing and calmness) and a green candle (for luck) and light the three of them and then speak your intentions into them and waft the smoke in the direction that your sister lives (so like, if you live in Atlanta and she’s in Chicago, wave the smoke towards the north). I also use a lot of crystals. You can carry them around with you, put them next to the candles, or mail some in a care package to your sister. Garnet is a good stone for rejuvenation, Onyx is great for giving you the strength to keep going in hard times, blue calcite is good for healing, blue lace agate for calming and tranquility and rose quartz is good for love. You can also go to a local shop that sells crystals and if you feel drawn to anything else there, send that in the care package with your stones, maybe some incense or a hematite ring (good for stability and grounding). I really hope this helps!

Casey: I am only moderately witchy, but I’m gonna tell you about something I did for quite a while when a good friend had a terminally ill parent that made me feel less helpless. I know I originally learned about this from a yoga teacher whose name I don’t remember, so thank you, whoever you are! So what I did was at the beginning of my yoga practice at the time, I would think about my friend and concentrate on sending the good energy from my yoga practice to her. I would think about sending the energy while standing​ or sitting​ with my hands in prayer position. Then I would do my yoga practice as usual, and then think of my friend again at the end, sending out all those good feelings and energy that I built up from doing yoga out to her. Maybe you don’t do yoga! But if you have another self-care or physical / relaxing practice you are already doing (like dancing or swimming or crafting or meditating or anything you do that makes you feel like you’re creating good energy) I think this would work just the same.

how do I know when I’m ready to date again after a long (almost five-year) relationship ended badly?

Casey: I’m sorry your long-term relationship ended badly. I’ve been there and it really sucks. I honestly think the “I’m ready to get back in the game” feeling is not an all or nothing kind of thing. When I was recovering from my big breakup I remember going back and forth from feeling like I wanted to start dating people again to feeling​ totally down in the dumps and completely still in love with my ex. There will be a time when you’re totally back in the dating game, but don’t beat yourself up if there isn’t some defining moment where you are 100% back on. I’m three years into a relationship and still sometimes feel shitty and scarred from past relationships. Just because you still think of and are affected by your back breakup doesn’t mean you aren’t ready to date. As much as romantic comedies might tell you, there is no amount of time it takes to get over someone that is relevant to how long you dated. It’s so specific to you and your situation, and you know yourself best! For me, the big sign that I was ready to date again was when I realized I kind of had this crush on a friend of a friend. I didn’t even necessarily want to actually date her, but the realization that I could have feelings​ for someone else reassured me I was capable of liking someone new, which felt like a big step! Maybe for you it will be a different change in your life, like when you go back to that hobby you put on the back burner while you and your ex were together. Or when you do something that you two used to do together and you feel okay about it. Or when someone brings up your ex and you can talk about them without panicking. It’s okay to take baby steps getting back into dating too. Maybe you want to sign up for OkCupid and just browse the cute girls. You don’t have to message anyone. Go to a party or the gay bar with a friend and just check people out, no pressure to chat anyone up. Be kind to yourself.

So I’m 20, a lesbian, in my 2nd year of uni, and I haven’t ever kissed anyone. Or done anything else with anyone. Of any gender. I do the dating app thing but I’ve never been on a date from one, I’ve never had a conversation that’s lasted longer than a couple of days. I’ve had a few crushes on friends (and other people that are completely unattainable), but I’ve never been on a date. And although I *can* drink in my country, I don’t, and I don’t tend to do the whole nightclub thing either, so I’ve never drunkenly made out with someone at a club. All this rambling to say: I feel like I’m doing things too late. All my friends seem to be dating and have had relationships, and I’m just left behind, single and lonely. Please reassure me that I’ll find someone! It sounds sad and needy but I’m starting to lose hope a bit. :(

Mey: Hey, so my friend Fia tells me I shouldn’t be embarrassed about this so I won’t be, I’m coming out here saying that the first time I kissed a girl I was 29 years old. Just last year! And I had only had one kiss before that and it was with a boy in the first grade. So being 20 is not being left behind, I’ll bet you $50 or you sound like you’re not American so 50 whatever your money is that you’ll kiss someone soon, and definitely before you’re as old I was. Opportunities will present themselves, you just gotta be open to them. If it gets to New Years and you still haven’t kissed someone, kissing at midnight is a great way to get that first kiss! Just tell your friends you wanna kiss someone at midnight and ask them to help you find someone! Kissing is fun and there shouldn’t be this much pressure on it! Really there’s no such thing as starting kissing too late. Like, look at me, I started when I was almost 30 and now here I am with a slutty reputation and I just kissed someone last night! Also Fia told me I should add “things will happen when the time is right. There’s no standard on what that timing should be. So chin up, love yourself first.” Which is great advice.

Siobhan: You are not starting too late! Promise! Also you have the advantages of starting dating with a better honed ability to evaluate people than you had as a teenager, and you get to skip some real adolescent nonsense (seriously, I try to forget my entire first year of university). Have you tried asking your friends to set you up with people? It’s not something to be embarrassed about and it has the benefit of making sure that anyone you meet has already been friend evaluated for jackassery. Also look for LGBT+ social clubs, there’s often ones for sports or film fans etc though they’re not always well advertised and they’re a nice low key environment for meeting people.

Valerie Anne Oh, friend! You’re doing just fine. I made out with people in college but I was 23 before I had a kiss that actually mattered. It’s about quality, not quantity, and you already know you’re a lesbian at 20, so you’re already doing so great! Hang in there. And as for the “all my friends seem to be dating” thing, I feel that. So hard. I’m 30, and I’ve seen my entire Facebook feed of high school friends get married, buy houses, and have babies, while I’m over here eating boxed mac & cheese while I wait for my landlord to fix a leak in my ceiling. But my advice for that feeling is to not look at your life and focus on what it’s missing, look at what you DO have. I heard a song recently with spoken-word verses and one line really spoke to me and I want to share it with you: “And I don’t know where he is, but I know he doesn’t play hide-and-seek. And I know I want to tell him that I haven’t been waiting. I’ve been creating a hotel of stories he can thank for the shameless, crooked smile I’ve become.” So try not to think of it as waiting for love to find you, don’t think of your life as something that can’t move forward until you find someone to share it with. Build your life, build your own happiness, then when the right person comes along, there will be so much to show them.

Any advice for getting back in the dating game after a seven-year hiatus?

Stef: Hello! As someone whose default setting is single and who has been single now for about three years, I feel like maybe I can offer some solidarity? A lot of things have changed in recent years, like apparently everyone is using Tinder and other dating apps (I’ve seen some people have good experiences with Her, though I have not so far). OKCupid seems to be a dystopian wasteland. If you think Tinder is a shallow and empty way to meet people, you are 100% correct, but on occasion you will start a conversation with a human being you might like to meet in person, and I guess see where the wind takes you? Some people like to have long conversations online before meeting and others want to get face-to-face right away, that’s really up to you. I will warn you that the kids these days are really into ghosting, which I have always found soul-crushing as well as terribly rude. I have no advice for meeting people in real life; I’m still trying to figure that one out myself. Good luck out there.

So I have Cerebral Palsy but am also Transgender ( Male to Female) and on HRT 8 months. What are some good ways to present around or incorporating my disability without being insecure about it?

Carrie: Hello friend! Congratulations on eight months, that’s wonderful and a huge milestone. As a fellow CPer, I know that fashion struggle. I wrote a piece about my relationship to fashion a while back that covers a lot of the mental gymnastics I performed to get where I am now; my look is definitely masculine-of-center, but even if that’s not your thing, there might be helpful principles in there for you.

For me it all started with the shoes. Because I wear my shoes over orthotic braces, I felt like I didn’t have many options and resigned myself to whatever literally fit. I didn’t think I had the right to care about how they looked on top of that. Wrong! Once I gave myself permission to actually choose an aesthetic I liked and work toward it, I realized that shoes could be a centerpiece rather than a clunky afterthought. So practically speaking, I suggest you pick one thing you already know you can wear, and push yourself to take that thing up a level. I knew I could wear sneakers — so what if I wore interesting ones and built a look off of that? You might be able to do something similar.

I’m not sure what your desired aesthetic or your access needs are, but there are a ton of stylish disabled folks out there to help you get inspired. I’d recommend Karin Hitselberger (who runs a site called Ceep Style), Cat Smith (disabled queer writer and fashion researcher, and owner of Normal Land Designs), Maria Town (mastermind behind CP Shoes), Annie Segarra (YouTuber who doesn’t specifically cover fashion but whose Instagram is fire), and Keah Brown’s #DisabledAndCute tag, which could lead you to a lot more sharply-dressed role models. Good news is that the disabled internet is overflowing with attractive people!

One more thing: yes, you’re probably going to have to overcome a lot of internalized ableism (which you might already be working on, given that you submitted this question) to get to that amazing aesthetic you’ve always dreamed of. Trust me when I say it’s worth it. Fashion is for you and me as much as for anyone else. You deserve to look fucking great.

One more thing: yes, you’re probably going to have to overcome a lot of internalized ableism (which you might already be working on, given that you submitted this question) to get to that amazing aesthetic you’ve always dreamed of. Trust me when I say it’s worth it. Fashion is for you and me as much as for anyone else. You deserve to look fucking great.

Mey: Ok so first of all I’m gonna say that I only partially read Carrie’s answer because it was wayyy too long. But Carrie is probably the best dressed masc of center white person I know, so I’d listen to her. Also I think that patterns and prints and fabric choices go a long way. Like Carrie said about sneakers, going for femme prints or patterns like florals or pastels will help if you’re wanting to present more femme. Also accessories are the shit. Pins and headbands and earrings and hats are some of the best fashion pieces out there.

Oof. Having one of those moments where I am feeling like I will never get out of this black hole. Lost my dream job yesterday bc my depression/anxiety kept me from seeming confident ab my work leading my superior to think I was not doing a good job…They literally said I didn’t have enough “confidence” so they were letting me go. I turned 31 this past week too so even if everything was going great I would be getting anxiety ab getting older. I really wish I had parents to call for literally any kind of support but alas they are super religious and not able to be in the picture at all for my sanity’s sake. I’ve had some good days in the last few weeks but this was totally unexpected and just really hard. Feel guilty even trying to go to my therapist now that I have a limited amt of money until I find another job. This is so hard. I am trying to imagine myself at 40. I will find my way, right? I’m tired of hurting all the time and struggling with mental health issues all the damn time. Solidarity you guys.

Valerie Anne: I can’t promise you that you’ll find your way, but I can hope you will. I think the only thing I can offer is, indeed, solidarity. Some of the best things that have happened in my life have come after and/or from the worst things that happened in my life. Last year was the worst year I’ve had since I was a teenager. The tectonic plates of my life all shifted unexpectedly, and frankly are still shifting. I find it hard to stand up every day, because I know I’ll get knocked down again. But I do it. Most days. Some days I crawl instead. Some days I just stay still because I’m tired of trying to keep my balance. But most days I stand up. And one of those times I did fall down, Autostraddle picked me up, and now I’m here, and it has changed my life for the better after just a few months. As time goes on the plates don’t move as fast, I don’t fall down as much. I see things I can do to make it easier, I see people who will help me down the road, I see a light at the end where maybe the ground is solid again.

It’s hard. It’s different every day. The other day I cleaned books off a table in my living room that had been there for weeks and I felt like I had run a marathon. I was mentally exhausted and also weirdly proud. Because every day I had seen the pile, known I should do something about, and was unable to. But then one day I could. I know this isn’t really advice. I’m hoping someone else has a better answer so I can read it. All I know for sure is that you’re not alone. I can’t promise you that you’ll find your way, but I believe you will.

KaeLyn: As someone who manages other human beings with dreams and feelings, if I had an employee who seemed to lack confidence in their work but was actually doing awesome work, I would ask them what’s up. Have a conversation. Give them feedback and concrete advice. If it was actually affecting their performance, I’d bring it up and work out a plan for improvement. I feel like, given your surprise at this sudden turn of events, your dream job did not come with a dream supervisor. I’m sorry you weren’t given the chance to succeed.

I am 34 and I don’t know what I am going to be doing with my life at 40. I don’t know if there is such a thing as “finding your way,” 100%. All of us are grasping in the dark at times. Especially queer folks like us whose culture is SO MUCH about youth and who literally lost a whole generation of elders in the 80’s and early 90’s to AIDS and whose families are often distant (or abusive). I think taking care of yourself by getting the therapy that helps you cope and living your life day-by-day is absolutely enough right now. You are worthy of the time it takes to care for yourself. You are a person who matters.

I’m really sorry shit is hard right now. I don’t know when it gets better, but I know that you deserve good things in life, including an employer that is supportive and whatever mental health care you need to see yourself through the day. Sending loads of love!

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!