Community Rainbow Waves

Bi

Since i was a child i love everything that are for boys.
Because i want to be recognize as strong and brave, like a soldier.
(Not discriminating but hey its the prejudice and i was just a Kid)

Then as i grow up i am attracted with girls but when i went to highschool i was attracted with my schoolmate and he was a guy but i thought i just want to be like him if im gonna be a guy i want to be like him. But i was wrong i like him like him. Then when i went to college i have crushes who are guys and gals. But i only have 1 relationship, a relationship that i was so sure, made plans, happy, contented and she was a girl yes was we broke up. I love her so much, love because it never fades out.

I love her with all of me and with everything that i am. I can do and will anything for her. Words cant explain.

Right now im alone. Doing the will of God. Because that is also the reason why we broke up. I hope that our breakup and sacrifices were worth it. And that we can endure till the end.

A gay stubborn sweetheart

When I was younger I had no idea that the LGBTQ+ community was even a thing, my family never spoke about it and I had never ever witnessed anything of the sort so I didn’t have a knowledgeable background on any of it. I had my first girlfriend at the age of 9 and it was due to the fact she had “forced” it upon me, she kept asking me out and so on. I guess that is where it started and baring in mind I had no idea, I genuinely thought that was normal like any other relationship.

Moving on to first year in secondary school (I was around 12) that was when I realised after doing a lot of research I found out that I was bisexual, I was fascinated by girls as there was just something different about them compared to boys. I told my best friend that I was bisexual and she was very very supportive of me and helped me a lot along the way. A couple months pass and I was starting to get confused, I was thinking “do I just like girls so could I be lesbian?”, I told my best friend and she still stayed supportive, a couple weeks pass and I told her I was bisexual again and that I must like boys.

A year passes and I move away from my hometown to the beautiful highlands and I met these wonderful people who helped me to see myself in a new way. We were out one night and they walked me home (baring in mind it was a new place so I wasnt to sure where to go) and they came out to me, it was such an incredible moment and experience for me. I felt safe so I came out to them that night also. Another year or so passes and I came out to my mum during a lunch break in school, which was just so out of the blue but at that moment I knew it needed to be done. There was fear as I could tell by her tone that she was not a fan of me liking girls. I got home and we talked about it and she told me I was confused because I wasnt of legal age (I must have been 14/15) assuming that since I couldn’t legally be “sexually active” I couldnt know if I liked girls or not. I found it wrong myself because I knew I wasnt confused and we never talked about it after that until I brought home my girlfriend at the time and introduced her to my mum, she was still rather “upset” I guess, I’m not sure how to describe it but she kinda took on board that this was who I was becoming. I told my dad later on in life from my mum (they split up and it was confusing times) and he understood wholeheartedly and loved me for who I am and has always tried to keep me happy and I couldnt be any more thankful to have him by my side.

I’m almost 20 now and I couldn’t be happier with my sexuality and I’m hoping that since when I came out to my mum till now she has gotten a better understanding that this me, this is who I am, this is who I want to be.

Gayyyyyy/Lesbian 🙂

Hello! I’m a 17 year old girl and I’m gayyyyy but I’m
not out yet. But feel free to put this on the website! Ok into the
story. I first realized when a certain situation happened *ahem when I
was play fighting with one of my friends who was a girl and she kinda
got on top of me and just started to hold me down cuz we were sort of
wrestling. Anyways after that I freaked out and was like WHAT IS THIS
FEELING NONONO GO AWAY HORRIBLE FEELING. So I strictly was against being
attracted to girls in any fashion for a couple months and I grew up in a
homophobic Asian family where my parents would always say EW GROSS WHAT
IS THIS whenever they saw any LGBTQ+ representation on tv. And every
time my parents did that I would get a tight knot in my chest and I
would have the urge to cry. I realized that a life where I felt so
anxious around my parents, wasn’t a life that I wanted. So
eventually… I told my best friend that I was gay and I knew she would
be fine with it bc she was Bi and it was the best thing ever bc I felt a
weight being lifted off my shoulders. I am still in the process of
telling everyone around me but I’ve told my close friends and they all
were like “yeah we knew” haha. I’m still really scared of telling
my parents that I’m gay but I’ll get there soon enough 🙂 ps thank
you so much for an inspiration to me and representing the LGBTQ+
community in a way that they deserve

I had been holding my breath for so long, and I needed to exhale at one point or another, or I would explode from holding it in.

I’ve had crushes on girls for as long as I can remember. Never made much of it, figured it was “normal”. Thought maybe it was just because I admired them and wanted to be them, or that it was a typical part of growing up.

In high school, I had crushes on boys and girls. I didn’t know much about anything back then, so I figured it was just a phase and one side would fade and disappear over time. That I was just figuring myself out and, one day, one side would win.
Since all I knew that existed was either gay or straight, it had to be one or the other, right?

I always hoped I would end up being only into boys, so that I could be “normal”. I wanted to be normal more than anything in this world.
My whole life, I had never fit in at all. With anyone, or anywhere. So I needed to at least be “normal” for one freaking thing, you know what I mean?

But then in college… I mean, classic story I guess, I fell for my straight female best friend. It didn’t go anywhere, but because at the time the only representation of bisexuality was the toxic version I had seen in the media, as well as the horrible things people would say about bisexuals, I decided to bury my attraction to guys.
I could NOT be bi… I’d rather be gay than bi. The examples I had seen were evil and toxic, and I just couldn’t be like them. There was no way. Absolutely no way. Never. Nope.

So I did everything I could to bury that side of me.
I would be so mean to myself.
…Fear and shame can make you think terrible words and do terrible things.

After a while, still in college, I ended up coming out as a lesbian. I hoped that by saying it, it would make it real. That it would erase the other part I didn’t want to think about.
I came out online to my classmates, after testing the waters for a while, trying to see if they would be accepting or not.

It was mostly fine. The more religious ones would often remind me that I would be going to hell for it, but apart from that it was great and the guys invited me to hang out with them. That was fun 🙂

Some time later, I came out to my parents through a letter I left in a place I knew they’d see it.

I was absolutely terrified they would kick me out.

The thing is… I come from a really judgmental family. My mum is very religious, but I’ve also heard a lot of racist and homophobic things growing up. And that’s just a tiny part of the range of judging comments I’ve heard all my life.

I’ve never been close to my family.
Discussions have never been a thing.
Disagreements mean either silence or terrible fights. Or both.

So I had no idea how that would turn out, but I felt like I needed to do it, if only to stop hearing “when are you gonna get a boyfriend?” that always tore me up inside.

I couldn’t breathe. I had been holding my breath for so long, and I needed to exhale at one point or another, or I would explode from holding it in.

Fortunately, in the end it was okay. I mean, at least they didn’t kick me out.

The “conversation” lasted for about 2 minutes, max, and then we never spoke about it again. (Except for the “maybe it’s just a phase” that I got a few times over the early years.)

That was around… 2004 I think?

Then once, in a birthday message a few years ago, my mum mentioned that she hoped I would find a woman I could be happy with. But that’s pretty much it. (And even today, I still hear homophobic things sometimes when I visit, if there’s something on TV about our beautiful community.)

Some time after I came out to my parents, I came out by email to most of my extended family. Again, I’ve never been close to anyone, and it’s always been easier for me to write than speak, so that’s how I chose to do it.
As far as I know, they’re all accepting. The ones I’ve told, anyway. But for other reasons, I stopped seeing them around that time, so who knows, really.

But to this day, except my godmother who I told recently when the topic came up, they all still think I’m gay.
Since emotionally I’ve only fallen for women, I didn’t want my parents to start hoping I would end up with a man when I don’t see it ever happening.

I mean, I’m pansexual, so I could end up with anyone I connect with no matter their gender, but… I’ve fallen for 3 women so far. No one else.

When I find “the one”, I want to finally feel safe using my chosen label. But until then, I feel safer just not talking about it around my parents.

But speaking of pansexuality… At some point I decided that no matter what society thought about bisexuality, I was only hurting myself by trying to fight who I was.
And then I heard about pansexuality, and it was the first label that I really connected with. The definition made so much sense to me, and it just felt right.

The puzzle pieces finally clicked into place. Falling for someone’s soul, regardless of their gender, regardless of their genitalia, made all the sense in the world to me.
And by learning about the different labels, by finding great people who identified as them, I started to really accept myself and eventually started to love this part of me.

I mean… I’m just me, you know? 🙂

I’m also out in my workplace now. Took me years and for an openly gay man to be hired for me to feel safe enough to do it, but it’s done. Haven’t had any problems so far.

And I want to believe that I would also be open if I ever got a different job.

I can’t go back to hiding. I need to breathe.
Now that I know how great and freeing it feels to have air moving through my lungs, I don’t want to hide this huge part of who I am.

And today, well… I’m just fighting for better representation. And for bisexuality and pansexuality to be seen in a better light (and to be seen, period), so that the next generations don’t have to feel all the shame I’ve felt back when I was still figuring it out.

Labels or no labels, people should have access to amazing examples of every shade of our beautiful and colourful rainbow, so they can find a place to fit in somewhere along the way.

I’m convinced that love is stronger than everything else, so… I do believe that one day love will truly win.

And what a world this will be. x

The real Juls

I’m currently 28 years old and my journey started in the form of a great internal storm when I was 16 years old, I was studying in a religious school and to be honest Colombia in those years was not a progressive and comfortable environment to talk about issues such as diversity and sexual orientation.
I grew up in a catholic family, my school was catholic, and my training was guided by the principles of a catholic family, so anything that came out of that pattern was labeled taboo or people just made offensive jokes about it. During high school my friends always talked about boys, all my close friends had a boyfriend in the same classroom or in the same school and in the meantime I saw the boys only as friends, the idea of ​​having a boyfriend never crossed my mind, in fact it always seemed irrelevant to me. With the girls it was very different, I felt that “something” that was absent when I saw a boy, but I always kept silent because, due to my ignorance, I thought it was something irrelevant and temporary, perhaps simple admiration.
At university nothing changed, I saw a girl and I still felt the same but this time with a little more freedom to obtain information I was able to find too many articles and LGBT content that helped me to know that something real was happening to me. When I finished university, 6 years had already passed and what started as a storm inside me became an authentic apocalypse, it was many years where the silence had wreaked havoc. What was stopping me? My family. I imagined a situation where I would tell my family and terror would take over because I could hear their voices saying “What have we failed at?”, So to release some of that destructive anxiety I started by telling my closest friends and they gave me that warmth and understanding I needed to keep myself sane at least until I told my family. It took me another year to gather all the strength to tell my family that it only consists of my mother and godmother that I’m a lesbian. The terror I felt when I told them is indescribable, my lips and throat were dry, I could not formulate a coherent phrase and my body was blocked but I could do it and I could feel free, that was…like 4 or 5 years ago I don’t remember well and I still feel that my mother has not assimilated it 100% because she is also the connection with my father’s family and I know that no one in that circle knows it, only my godmother’s family knows it.
I am an only child, perhaps that is why my mother still doesn’t fully assimilate it because she expected from me what almost all parents expect from their children: husband/wife and children but it doesn’t matter because my mother already knows and she will not see me with masks and lying to her, she will understand it 100% someday. Right now I’m calm, there are not storms inside me anymore.

Lesbian

It took me years to finally accept who I was, and when I did I felt so alone. But when I couldn’t breathe anymore and I couldn’t control my emotions, I broke down and told my mom. She immediately told me she knew and loved me. My dad was so unphased and just said, that’s my girl. My best friend who was antigay told me he loved me and I changed his mind on gay people. All in all, my loved ones were happy for me and encouraged me to live my best life. Thanks Mom, Poppa, and Alex. I love you too, MJay

A flamboyant, macho, brainiac weirdo

Hello there,
I guess I should start with the introduction.
My name is Deniz, most people call me Deni (sounds just like Danny or Denny) and it kinda grew on me because in reality I don’t like my name. Actually I don’t like how it sounds, and sometimes people have hard time pronouncing it correctly (They usually use alternative spelling version in their native language). I just gave up eventually. In Turkish language, “Deniz” is a unisex name, the word means “sea”. For unknown reasons, people always I assume that I’m a biological man and address me as such; on the phone, on documents, in emails and etc. I know that my gender expression isn’t helping at all, but it always bothered me, being assumed to be someone and stuff.

I’d like to share a story about the time I came out as bisexual because 12 years ago coming out as queer just wasn’t in the cards. Society I was in, including myself, wasn’t ready to face the notion of gender expressions other that the binary system itself.
When I was 16, I decided to come out to my friends. I wanted to be honest, lying is not my strongest quality, never was. I was always in trıuble for being blunt. No one apreciated it, probably my dead pan face gave it away. I dunno.
I was the team captain of when I was teenager, and lots of younger swimmers in my team were looking up to me. I felt like I had the responsibility to set a good example (I mean I was the older child, I expected too much of myself I see it now). Parents were trusting me to be a wise leader, kids were coming to me with their problems. I was changing in the dressing rooms I shared with lots of younger girls and I didn’t want them to fear me. I didn’t want to seem like a predator, a freak who was supposed to be their older sister (I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of being sexually attracted to anyone until I graduated from high school, it was more of an emotional state of mine for me)
Shortly, I didn’t want to betray anyone’s trust. My coach was already sexually harrassing and grooming, flirting with (I mean what a cliché, amirite?) kids, other athletes, moms…
However, I never had the chance to be myself, I didn’t have the chance nor time to discover what I was, who I was and what I wanted in life other than what was bestowed upon me as an ideal supported and encouraged by the adults in my inner circle. (Truth time, I thought french kiss was the worst thing ever, it was messy and unsanitary, plus in high school at one time I was dating a med student and wait, I just realized that I’ve sated so many med students and I work at a hospital, what is wrong with me – I hated the French kiss because of all the med students I dated)
I attended an elite high school that is still ranked in top ten in the country I live in. It was competitive, very stressful (I don’t want to brag but Turkish education syatem is shit, I was one of the lucky ones and I had to earn my place by sacrificing anything that could be considered as fun). I never get to enjoy that high school experience as most people did. (I don’t even know what that means I mean I made out with girls and went to parties and got drunk and shit but it was low key, considering who I was in college)

One day, I just turned to my friend while we were sitting at our desks in class (I think we were in recess), mind you we were all nerds and geeks with extra ordinary curriculums up our sleeves (up to our butts, my classmate is a soloist – violinist and a successful lawyer right now), and that friend of mine was trying to solve a trigonometry equation that was bothering her for so long (time is relative). I looked at her, and in all seriousness told her that I was bisexual, that I actually liked boys and girls, as if it was my big shameful secret – it felt like I died inside.
I mean, I already dated the basketball team captain in freshman year and the drum player of the school band in sophmore, I was popular (as a weirdo maybe). It felt like a legit mistake. I could’ve seen the next day, people making fun of me and the mentioning the time they found my Lindsay Lohan photo album and asked what it was, the I replied with “She is my role model” bullshit when it was clearly, ehm… whatsevs…
Anyway, she stopped, looked at me, and said “Good for you, I’m happy for you. Now please solve this one because I can’t, and it’s embarrasing.” So, I did. It was easier to solve it if you pretend that the triangle was a part of a pizza slice, and the radius of the arc under the triangle was mirroring the parabol on the graph, thus tan(x) wasn’t just a mystery that haunted my friend for the last couple of hours. (it might have been 5 min)
She was more interested in solving the geometric riddle than whom I’d fancy. I was heartbroken. Who did she think she was? I’m just joking, it was a huge relief.

That was a wake-up call for me to be honest. That eureka moment bunked many negative pretend-comments I had about myself. I was in my head for so long. I was afraid I would let everyone down that I never realized I was letting myself down by belittling myself. I was who I was, I still am who I am. My sexuality, my gender, my gender expression are just not as interesting comparing to my personality, my vision, my interests, what I am capable of, and what I succeded.
I was really proud of myself, and then college happened…

Lili

A part of me always knew, since I was a child I had a class of attention for women, I always liked to be helpful with them, to take care of them, to be for them.
But I had never seen this kind of relationship until I was 13 – 14 years old, that’s when I realized that this society and my family would not receive me with open arms. And I struggled for years to stop being myself, it was a very difficult time, where I hated myself. I told myself that this was going to happen and that I wasn’t really a lesbian.
It was that time with that girl, that only by the touch of her hand with my hand I knew that this was not a stage that was totally wrong.
Then I met someone like me who lived her life freely, we became friends. I filled her with questions because I wanted to know why this had happened to me, was it normal? Why couldn’t I get the woman I liked out of my mind? Should I tell my parents?
I am grateful that she helped me to find myself and not wish for death, I know she went through her hell too.
And I also discovered that it was not just her and me but that a very large community was supporting and encouraging us to go and get these colors out.
Now I am proud of who I am, I have no doubt. I know it’s still hard for me, I have no support in my family. But that doesn’t stop me, if I have to walk alone, I will do it.
Thank you for this space, Dom, you also had a hand in finding out where I belong.

My coming-out journey : 20 years old lesbian in France

I have turned 20 only a few months ago, but it took me some time to identify and accept who I am: a proud lesbian.

When I was around 12, I talked with a girl who were a few years older than me and who was bisexual. My first question (once I learned what it was from her), was: “How did you know?”
For me, who didn’t even know that heterosexuality wasn’t the only sexuality existing, it was a chock! Her answer gave me the final electroshock I needed: “I just know”.
She just knew! What an answer for the young girl that I was! And from this point, I started thinking. I remembered all the times were I looked at girls, all the times I wanted to be close to them, all the times I had feel things that I didn’t know how to interpret when I looked at some of my friends… And then I compared it with how I was reacting to boys, especially the ones that I dated (even if, well, dating at 12 years old isn’t much more than holding hands and playing video games). The more I thought about it the more I realized that even the fact of holding the hand of my boyfriend was something that gave me goose bumps, and not the right kind.

A few years passed, and when I started high school I still didn’t accepted myself as a lesbian. I had only decided to hide this, even if I didn’t really know about homophobia and all. I wanted to be like everyone else, not different. And it wasn’t exactly as if a lot of cartoon characters were queer when I grew up, so the only person that I knew was queer was the bisexual girl from when I was 12! What a great representation of diversity!
But, one day, I just couldn’t hide the truth to myself anymore: I was having a mega crush on my best friend! Very soon I told her, and even if it was a little difficult for me to live with that, she totally accepted me. And it was the first step of my coming-out.
At first, I still didn’t really accept that I was a lesbian, so, I decided to tell my friends that I was bisexual. Like that I could still hide the part of me that loved girls… and I started dating boys again. Not my best idea since the few kiss that I had with them made me so mentally sick that I couldn’t be close to a guy in the next months without frowning ! (Yeah I must have been dramatic too, but hey, what do you expect from a queer artistic woman?). Anyway, I quickly realized after that, that boys weren’t at all what I wanted.

From there, I decided to tell my friends that I was a lesbian. They all accepted me and supported me. And it was so freeing to finally admit it! It didn’t mean that I was really “proud” of it. My friends knew it, but I didn’t want other people to know.
Then, I told my parents, who were totally supportive, and I’ll always remember my mom saying: “Yeah, I never pictured you coming home with a guy. I guess I just knew”.
I was 18 and my friends and parents knew who I was, they supported me, but me I had still issues with this. I had to wait to enter to university and to meet with new friends, who were all queer, to really admit and be proud of my sexuality. I met with all kind of person who had other genders and sexualities than what I had knew my whole life. They accepted me, and seeing them this free and proud just made it easier for me to feel the same way.

I’m 20 now, and I’m a proud out lesbian. Well, out, yes and no. I don’t really fell like my coming-out is really over, because they’re still two people at whom I haven’t said anything: my grandparents. I know that they’re homophobic and absolutely non-supportive of difference. We already have a complicated relationship, and I’m afraid of telling them this about me, because I’m pretty sure that it would mean the end of our relationship…
So yeah, I’m proud of who I am and don’t hide it anymore. I’m glad to be in the light and to be out, but I know that I haven’t really finished my coming-out journey. Telling my grandparents will be my last step in order to completely be honest about all this.

If I have learned something from all of this is that no matter who you are, if you aren’t ready, you don’t have to come into the light. All that matters is to do it at your own rhythm, step by step. Coming-out is the most freeing experience of my life, and I’m glad that I had to do it in order to be who I am today, but it isn’t something that must be forced on you: you just have to take your time and do it when you’re ready.

I am me.

CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT SELF-HARMING BEHAVIOR.

Since I was a little girl I felt so confused as to why I saw the girls the same way all of my friends saw the boys, I could understand why they thought the boy looked cute, this only added to my confusion. I struggled silently until the summer before high school, my best friend asked me to meet up with another girl who she liked, that was the first time I realised I was not alone. We went to the city and her friend joined us there, she too had come along with a friend, I remember seeing her and I knew instantly I was attracted to her, I didn’t just think she was pretty, there was so many more feelings going on in my head than that. We spent the entire day just smiling at each other, we both went incredibly shy, I dared to think maybe she felt it too. This was back when msn was the in thing so we spent hours upon hours talking to each other every evening and we met up a couple of times with our friends, after the third time we met up I confessed to her I liked her and how confused it was making me feel, luckily she was understanding as she felt the same way. I was so excited to have found someone who understood me for me but I was terrified of what my family and friends would think, how could I possibly tell them I had a girlfriend? The first person I turned to was my sister and she was so supportive, she still helps me to remain positive even to this day. She told me she loved me no matter what and that my family would say the same, but I was still terrified to tell my parents, especially my mum, I come from a Catholic family, church every Sunday, Catholic schools. I decided to wait a bit to tell the rest of my family but my friends started questioning me when we returned to school, so I decided to tell them, I was unapologetically out and proud at school and honestly no one even battered an eyelid, in fact a few other girls and one boy in my year also came out a couple of weeks later, which was incredible. When I eventually told my parents my mum told me it was a phase, I had been dreading hearing that, it broke me. I left my girlfriend and became seriously depressed, my mum was and still is my rock, I needed her support the most. I completely lost myself after that, all of my friends started meeting guys and going to parties, I decided I needed to be ‘normal’ and so I did the same, I was getting attention and so decided to just go for it but although I enjoyed the partying and even the attention, I was missing something, I felt so empty inside. High school was over and I had spent 4 years of my life battling against my heart to be ‘normal’ and I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, I had been to prom the night before and it just all felt so fake, this wasn’t me and I didn’t want to be here if I couldn’t be me, I took an overdose, my mum found me and rushed me to hospital, I wasn’t in a good way but I pulled through, I had to agree to go to councilling before the would let me go home, so I did. I went along and told them what I knew they wanted to here but it was all a lie, I was hurting so badly inside. I decided to go on an online forum for lesbians and just talk to people in the hope it would make me feel okay being the real me, I met a girl on there and we really hit it off. We met up and she was my first true love, after a short while I moved away from home and lived with her and her family, we eventually got our own place and I felt like I could be me, the real me. Unfortunately she wasn’t the loving person I thought she was and she did a lot of very bad things, she broke me to pieces but my mum was there to pick me back up. She told me she understood and it was okay, she loved me no matter what, she loved me for me, the real me. Every part of me wanted to believe her but the voices inside repeatedly screamed ‘it’s just a phase’ and so I drank to numb the pain of a heart break and the feeling of rejection, of being a freak. I spent two years working to go out and drink and/or do drugs, my world was spiraling out of control and I knew I needed help but felt the only person I could turn to was my sister and so that is was I did. I turned up at her door in tears, she held me and her husband called my parents, within 15 minutes my parents, brother and his wife had all come to my sisters home, they told me it was okay to be me, they just wanted me to be okay and to realise my worth and how much I meant to them and from that day I never looked back. I haven’t touched drugs in 6 years, I have a pint or 6 if the footballs on but supporting Norwich City does that to you! I don’t smoke. I am out and proud again, at home, with my friends and at work. I am currently planning my wedding with my Fiancé for 2022 and my whole family will be there and hers. Sometimes the road is tough, really relentlessly tough but stick it out. Find your person, find them and talk to them, always, tell them your fears, your worries and allow them to reassure your that you are perfect the way you are.