The Power of Love
Aiko Jones
6/28/2023
The best decision I have ever made was telling the world a very small detail about me. The best decision I have ever made was “coming out”.
The best decision I have ever made was also the hardest and scariest decision I have ever made. It was a decision that would change how people viewed me and how much they respected me. It was a decision that I thought would change my life forever and I was right about that, but I was wrong about what that change would look like. The best decision I have ever made was telling the world a very small detail about me. The best decision I have ever made was “coming out”.
As I write this, I am approaching 24 years old. I am a second-year master’s student in the University of Louisville’s Communication program. I have a dog and a cat, and I love to bake. I like puzzles, I love learning, and I wish I were ambidextrous. I am also engaged … to the most amazing woman I have ever met in my life. As I write this, I am proud, not of rainbows and labels and pride parades, but of my authenticity and my constant effort to live my truth. As I write this, I am proud to be who I am, and to be her publicly.
Left: Aiko & Carolann smiling for the camera Middle: Aiko Jones proposing to her girlfriend, Carolann Right: Aiko's fiancé Carolann throwing an L's Up, holding a fathead of Aiko.
How could love, that has the power to heal and to empower, also have the power to ruin me?
By no means was getting to this point easy, and for most of my life, I had no desire to get here. If you asked me seven years ago, I didn’t see myself getting married. I was going to be the cool aunt to my nieces and nephews, who was always single because she could never love who she wanted to.
I have always known that I love differently. Not just in terms of who I love, but how I love. When I love, I love hard. I would always wonder how a feeling so powerful could be wrong. How could love, that has the power to heal and to empower, also have the power to ruin me? It never made any sense, but I believed it, and for over 20 years of my life I was ashamed of it.
I was scared that everyone who loved me, and who I loved, would abandon me once they knew the truth and I had no plans of letting that happen. The thought of being alone in this world controlled me. I didn’t want to be a disappointment. I didn’t want to be looked down on. I knew I was a good person, but this – this thing about me made me bad. So, no one could know.
Along my journey, I made a couple connections – met people who I wanted to tell, and I did. It was always someone who I was close with, and who had shown me some sort of sign that they wouldn’t think of me any differently. I can count on one hand, those who knew my terrible secret, and, once they knew we didn’t talk about it much, if at all. I liked it that way. I felt seen in some way, but I also didn’t to have to be constantly reminded of this part of me that I wanted to destroy. In fact, I still tried day after day to change how I felt.
Coming to college was good for me. I came to a school where no one knew me in a country that is a little more accepting of my kind of love. Did I plan on “coming out”? Heck no but I was able to feel slightly more comfortable existing in the world.
I met my fiancée in biology class, and we became acquaintances. On a random day, we went to get food and she asked me if I was attracted to women. Without hesitation, I answered the affirmative (crazy, I know). I had known this person for what felt like a couple of weeks, but was actually around a year, and I had just told them my deepest, darkest secret.
She then asked why I felt comfortable telling her, and I don’t really think I had an answer.
That night, my brain felt like that one scene in SpongeBob SquarePants where the little guys in his head are running around throwing files everywhere and burning the place down. I had barely known this person, and she now knew something about me that people who I’d known my entire life hadn’t.
She had something on me. Surely, she would tell the world, and my life would be over, right? (Of course because that’s what happens in the movies). Spoiler alert, nothing changed. In fact, the more we hung out, the less I hated the way that I love, and the more I wanted to tell people about it.
But I knew I couldn’t. There was too much at stake.
Top Left: Aiko Jones, posing with her fiancé Carolann & former Louisville swimmer, Nick Albiero at the 2022 Wigs & Kicks party, part of the Derby Diversity Week. Top Right: Aiko Jones warms up prior to a volleyball match, wearing an adidas Love Unites shirt. Bottom Left: Aiko Jones smiles with L's Up, following Louisville Volleyball's win over Oregon, to send them to a second consecutive Final Four. Bottom Right: Aiko Jones poses in front of a rainbow heart on the streets of Saõ Paulo, Brazil.
So, life went on.
I continued to try and escape my own mind, and my secret was still my secret.
I prayed, and cried, and prayed, and cried, but nothing worked. There were days where I thought I would be better off physically ripping my heart out than fighting my internal battle (and yes, I know that makes no sense physiologically). Thankfully, I pressed on, holding out hope that the light at the end of this long tunnel would appear if I kept on my journey long enough.
I grew very close to a friend of mine and the more she and I bonded the more I knew what we had was special. After holding out long enough, I told her that I had fallen in love with her. You would think the story proceeded happily ever after, after that, but alas, you would be wrong. I also told her that we would never date because I would never “come out” publicly.
To my surprise and probably yours, she stuck around.
Today, we are engaged. We have a dog and a cat, and my family and friends love her. I am “out”, and I am happier than ever. My fiancée is the same friend from biology class who I came out to on a whim, and she is now my favorite person in the world.
I have always known that I love differently. When I love, I love hard, and love is what saved me. Love has saved me tears, love has saved me pain, and love has saved my life on multiple occasions. Earlier I said that love had the power to ruin me, and I really thought it did. I also said that love had the power to heal and to empower, and I am a living testament to that. For 20 years of my life, I was ashamed of love, but not anymore.
My story is a story of growth and acceptance.
My story is a story of pride.
