There’s a ship floating above the planet Io, just high enough it could drop out of safe orbit in a matter of seconds. Its pilot is a fierce guardian – though she’s likely more interested in stretching her legs and enjoying a few minutes to air out on the safety of her ship.

I don’t know the name of this Guardian, but she’s quietly existing in the back of my head during most of the day. I know that parts of her could even be a reflection of me.
She’s got a desire to hide, so she does. She hides her face and body behind armor. She’s quiet in ways that I can never really be, and more stoic in the face of trauma than I’ve been by half.

For a few hours of the day I can know and exist in the body of this woman. Just enough time to drop down to the surface of that planet and many others. I’ll never know what it’s like to take the armor off, though, or to feel the cold interior of a dropship kiss the bottoms of my feet when I first take my boots off.

All of the ways this Guardian exist in my head serve to remind me that I’ll never really be strong enough to commit to being the woman I’d like to. That growing up where I did, I’m always trapped in this way of thinking that I have too much to lose if I just face the thoughts that exist in my head.

How many people out there have discovered their initial hint of queerness, that spark that helps them walk down the path of discovering their own body for what they know it should be, from videogames? Dozens, more than that, more than could ever really be counted.

I’M NOT QUEER ENOUGH, I tell myself daily: when I’m sitting alone in my room writing. When I’m having the brief interactions I get to have with other queer people while living in relative rural isolation. When I hang on to coworkers words about their time in college that they got to study gender and sexuality. When I’m putting on lipstick, or wearing the same loose fitting denim jeans to my day job three times a week.

I wonder then, how many more people are out there like me: Living in situations where they fear the idea of their own identity being used against them. Quietly seeking refuge in digital worlds, where for at least a few hours out of the day they can get a little closer to who they are.

I’ll never be feminine in the way the world tells me to, and that’s okay. My problems with that are my own: they’re something for me alone to unpack and deal with. This isn’t an article about beauty standards or “what it takes” to live and present yourself the way you really want to be seen.

Out in Eorzea, though, there’s a mountain of a woman who’s living quietly. She might be the loudest woman in the room frequently: when you’ve got as many stories as she does it’s hard not to be. She lives quietly, though, because she’s just one of many: people call them the Warriors of Light. Some days, you’d probably think they were the only people besides a handful of village elders and travellers that really existed in the world they’re so numerous.

Her name is Turinea and if you asked her where she’s from she’d probably tell you it’s not as important as where she’s going. Afterwards, she’d laugh in the hearty way she does and gulp down another mug of the swill that taverns out in the end of the world call ale.

Turinea is too, unlike me: She’s willing to display a body she’s worked for, she’s loud. She lets herself be heard laughing even if the joke isn’t that funny just to lift the spirits of the room. She’ll never answer a question about herself if it means hearing about you instead.

For just a few hours of the day, I can experience something a little bit like getting to be her. I’ll never really get to feel the desert sun warm my skin or the ocean breeze fill my lungs with the taste of salt and seawater. I can log in, though. I can be there and I can be seen as her, just enough to feel comfortable in my body again.

Turinea and that nameless Guardian, they’re the women I used to wish I’d be sometimes. All of the times I did, I’d always push it down or push it away. “These feelings will go away.” I’d tell myself, maybe grow out my facial hair or have the kind of sex you can only describe as empty with someone I barely know.

It wasn’t until I started meeting other people like me for real that I started to see it doesn’t have to be this way. Some days though, it feels like living with who I want to honestly be is a million miles away. Digital expression is never completely authentic, but without it I’d never have gotten close to discovering who I wanted to be. Every time I think about that, I wonder about who else is out there that went through, that go through the same thing.