I walked out of Love, Simon a ball of emotions. I was happy, delighting in what was an unabashedly romantic story with a young gay protagonist. I was melancholy, mourning an adolescence I never had. I was both jealous and grateful, envying a generation of young queer people who had Simon’s story to celebrate, but at the same time relieved that they might not struggle as I had.

And I was proud and validated, because while Love, Simon was not my story, parts of my story were reflected in Simon’s journey.

It has been a couple of weeks since I watched the film and I have had time to process it. Seemingly, it is not a film that warrants processing. It adheres to the conventions of a well-worn genre. It is intended for the not-particularly discerning mainstream. But I nevertheless found it deeply affecting and have needed time to come to terms with why.

Growing up in the ‘90s in a conservative Catholic family in a conservative town in Australia’s most conservative state presented challenges for a young lad like me. You see, I wasn’t like the other boys; worryingly, it seemed I actually liked the other boys. And as time went on, I began to fear that this wasn’t a phase; that maybe I was stuck with this affliction, this “moral evil” and “objective disorder” that the Catholic Catechism on our bookshelf decried. Perhaps I was gay. A more terrifying prospect I could not have imagined. Unhelpfully, I had no one with whom I could talk about it. Catholics, as a general rule (and for all the talk of the golden rule) don’t collect sinners in their friendship groups. And I desperately needed to talk to a sinner.

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