As someone who has moved to a different continent to pursue higher education, I think it is safe for me to state that it is tough to be an international student. Of course, I do have a certain amount of caste and class privilege that has allowed me to move and study abroad in the first place. Despite this, the movement across borders does come along with its own challenges and feelings of isolation. Upon moving to a country where the majority does not look like me, eat like me, or talk like me, it was already a struggle. But add to that the parts of my identity that are not immediately visible to others, and it becomes an even more complicated situation.

When I started living in a student hall in London, I found it to be a strange experience to see all the students coming together from different countries around the world to study in what was, for many of us, our first-choice school. I am sure that many wondered how their social lives would turn out – in fact I literally had a girl say to me, “You need to make friends now because otherwise everyone will be in groups and you will be left alone.” Consider it a testimony to how much I value quality over quantity in friendships that instead of alarming me, her words made me feel concerned for how insecure she must be about navigating social situations and building perceptions. But this did not mean that the situation ironed itself out for my comfort.

When searching for friendships with depth and quality, I need to feel like my whole self is seen, respected, and cherished in the space between us. How am I supposed to be able to open up with that kind of honesty, when I have no idea who might or might not react negatively to who I am? Many of us look for familiarity in new situations, and international students often find themselves turning to people from their own countries. This makes it a particularly taxing experience, when instead of finding comfort in hearing my mother tongue spoken in an alien land, I find myself hunting for clues in each sentence to make sure that the person in front of me is not a queerphobe. Being in a new country also means that I have no idea about the attitude that locals carry towards queer people. After all, progressive legislation does not automatically mean that every single citizen and community is progressive and accepting.If you are wondering why queer people don’t just assume that everyone is nice until proven otherwise, it is because the cost of accidentally coming out to somebody who hates your very existence can be extremely, definitely, totally not worth it.

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What all this leads to, then, is a queer girl (me) meeting people, exchanging names, smiling, and feeling suffocated because of the lack of avenues to seek community. So where does she (still me) turn? To fictional queer women, of course. In this case it was the brilliant women of A League Of Their Own. After an exhausting day of masking – I would play an episode of the Prime Video series and feel seen in the way Carden’s Greta would own her femininity and queerness in the same breath. I would see Jacobson’s Abbi find community and learn about queer culture and get lost in how she was surrounded by brilliant people. Unlike other shows where there is a single tokenized queer woman, this one represented the diverse aspects of being queer because, well, there were so many of us on screen! And together, they were a team! Eventually I would find people who would feel like my own teammates, but for now I was wrapped up in a cozy blanket and safe for the running time of the show.

This is what queer media does for people like me – it gives us a chance to see what can be- sometimes even what should be- and makes us feel a little less alone in moments when we can’t access community in other ways. This is why A League of Their Own is important, and this is why it absolutely sucks that Amazon canceled the show. I am not saying, even for a second, that it was perfect. It had many faults, but none of them felt gaping enough for it to not deserve another season when trashy reality television returns season after season. What is even worse, is that Amazon blamed this on the strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which is basically the company saying that the price that people pay for standing together as a community is to lose out on shows about standing together as a community. The irony is not lost on me.

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Of course, my stuckness in this particular situation was temporary – I slowly discovered queer groups and spaces around me. But not everyone is that lucky, and not everyone has that privilege. We might all end up wrapped up in our blanket from time to time – some of us more than others – wondering if there is anybody else out there like us. It is for those moments that we need to keep creating and supporting queer media representation because sometimes that is the only thing that can reply, “there is, there will be, there always has been.”