HEART ON MY SLEEVE

Between her body and her queerness, Madison Law grew up feeling different. In a quest to love the things the world taught her to hate, she discovered her path to liberation. Photo by Roisin Mooney.

I was 10 when I realised that I didn’t look the same as other kids. After years of adolescence, my clothes tightened and the number on my tags steadily increased. It went beyond the usual weight gain that came with puberty. I wasn’t growing into myself; I was stretching past.

Behind new layers of muscle and fat, I was afraid of being seen as anything other than small. I couldn’t reckon with my puffy jaw or the lines that ran like sand dunes down my stomach. I saw the same ones on my mother, hidden away by thick fabric. I learned to do the same with myself, and despite the space I took up, being overweight allowed me to do that. It was easier to be invisible than to be different.

My family never talked about queerness. It was another one of those things left unsaid. Unlike our looks, sexuality wasn’t something we shared. I was on my own in a body I was taught to hate with attractions I didn’t understand. I felt separate from my image and identity and refused to try to love what I had. Because of that, I never gave anyone a chance to know me or the body I was in.

At 16, I realised I looked like my father. With the same build: wide shoulders, flat hips, I could see his features in the bulk beneath my clothes—reflected back at me when I glanced in the mirror. Every morning, he left before I went off to school. At night, he stowed away in the garage. We rarely spoke. It hurt to see his face staring back.

The thing that brought about my self-acceptance was body modification. The day after I turned 18, I pierced the rounded nose my father and I shared. A few months later, I got my first tattoo, 19 centimetres down my shin. What started as an act of rebellion turned into something integral to my self-image.

Piercing my face made me see myself as a whole instead of a collection of facial features passed down. I never thought it possible to see me in my reflection, but the art on my body and the metal points of symmetry made me unique from my parents. I would stare and stare, and eventually, I liked who stared back.

These alterations brought beauty to the parts of me that bulged in awkward places. It made me appreciate my body in a way I thought bare skin would never allow, and eventually, I didn’t need to change anything to feel confident.

The tattoos and the piercings made my identity unavoidable; I wore it on my skin. It was in the layers of my hair and the metal running through my lip. I was outwardly queer for the first time, and not only that, I was happy. In the smallest sense, getting inked felt like my own act of queer liberation. I was freeing myself from the skin I was born in. I still have a long way to go. There are always going to be days when I don’t want to be seen, but for every one of those, there are many more when I am happy to be who I am. The answer was never losing weight, I’m not sure it ever really is, but for me, I just needed to make my outside reflect who I was within.

As an adult with a clear sense of style and direction, I was able to approach my parental relationship as someone more than just a daughter and reflect on the distance between us. It wasn’t just physical; I had tucked myself away throughout my childhood and into early adulthood. I never gave them a chance to accept my queerness. The fear of being truly seen by them turned me back into that scared little kid who hated the way she looked and the way she looked at other girls.

We’re trying, me and my parents. We have been for a while now. It took me a long time to come to terms with all that I am, and the least I can give them is time of their own to understand. The tattoos, the piercings, the weight, the queerness, it’s all part of who I am, and I wouldn’t take any of it back. I still catch glances of my dad in the mirror, but it only makes me feel thankful for all I have and all I’ve been given. I know we’ll be closer one day, and until then, I can look forward instead of looking back.