When my body was giving up, my spirit completely broken and, for the first time ever, my will to live ebbing away, love buoyed me until I was strong enough to fight again. Most of that love came from queers; that is what we do well, we queers – love. We know what it is to exist on the outside, how it feels to be marginalised, what we need to do to support each other so that our suffering is less and our joy more. I feel so lucky to be a part of such an incredible community. But this doesn’t mean I can’t hold up the mirror occasionally and say, this is not good enough. We’re not doing enough.

Growing up in the bush, surrounded by gum trees, red-belly black snakes and hairy huge huntsmen felt as natural to me as picking parsley, or trying to decipher Arabic when my parents were talking in secret or watching my aunties laugh as they belly danced to terrible 90s pop music. Those many worlds felt like they fit together. Still, I didn’t feel like I fully belonged.