Community Rainbow Waves

Nat

I started to realize and accept my feelings toward girls in middle school. I had just come out of a very stressful living situation and, since my brain didn’t have anything else to ruminate on, it turned to the girl that welcomed me into my new community. I spent the next several weeks v e r y confused and ended up texting my best friend to ask for help. I explained what I was feeling and she said that it was okay. She said I didn’t need a label to be worthy.

That was maybe five years ago. Now I’m a gay woman who is out to her family and is in a serious relationship. But that doesn’t mean it’s easier. I still get looks in the hallways for kissing my girlfriend. We still get scolded by administrators for laying our heads on each other’s shoulders. My family is tentatively accepting, but I know they’re uncomfortable. But I don’t let that stop me. I still hold my girlfriend and kiss her in the hallway. I still tell her that I love her. Because I do. And this is a part of who I am. And no one will ever take that away from me.

Queer

I knew I was apart of the community my freshman year of highschool when, no matter what I did I couldnt take my eyes off the girl who sat one seat up and to the right of me. It was something I couldn’t fight. I barely knew her aside from her name, but when she wasnt in class I noticed, when she didnt laugh at my jokes like the other 25 kids it didnt seem as funny to me anymore. I couldnt get her to laugh and I was determined and honestly I never did, what made her laugh was out teacher telling me to “leave the poor girl alone” that make her laugh.
When she smiled, I knew.
I grew up in church my entire life, and when I spent weeks thinking about her and trying to come up with jokes, I also spent weeks beating myself down and praying.
I wouldn’t come out for another year to my friends and they all accepted me and I was happy, I felt free. Two years later I was successfully making that same girl smile but now I had to grow some and ask her out. Two years later and she ended up sitting one row up to the right of me again in history class our junior year. I remember just staring at her the entire period, and then pretend I wasnt looking and blush really hard.
A year later I guess i finally said the right thing because we started to date. Yes ive been out for sometime by then, but being with her made me feel invincible. I felt comfortable walking down the streets of nyc holding my beautiful girlfriends hand still telling corny jokes.
All that would dissipate when I went home. My mom found out a year later and she hasnt seen me the same since. We’ve physically fought, she barely talks to me.
When I am home I am a shell but as soon as I am out of those four walls I am a giant of pride and happiness and alive.
Honestly the only reason I really survived it was because aside from being “home,” I get to be myself. My home is with my (still going strong) girlfriend, my amazing friends and the amazing lgbtq+ family.
Im just surviving and one day ill move out of here and then can I fully start to live my life to the fullest.

Here and queer 😉

At twelve I moved from primary to secondary school…to an all girls school the first few years were great, we were all pretty immature still, still played ‘tag’/’it’ in the playground. But then we started maturing and I found myself falling into the shadows. We’d all read the same books, watch the same films and tv shows then discuss like any normal teenage friendship group but while they’d gossip about how hot the main character was- Damon from ‘the vampire diaries’ for example or Theo James as Four in ‘divergent’, I couldn’t deny that these guys were attractive but I couldn’t understand why my friends were SO obsessed with them to the point where I thought they’d see me as different if I didn’t reciprocate the same thoughts. So I pretended. When in reality I had a huge crush on Tris (divergent) or Bonnie (tbf), or Lena (beautiful creatures) but that’s only in hindsight. Of course I wouldn’t admit to myself these feelings because surely they were wrong. There were ‘out’ people in my school but I saw the way they got treated how the ‘f’ slur got thrown at them like they were nothing. And I wasn’t prepared for that. A few years later…at 16, I moved to a different school for sixth form whose community was so accepting. In fact the head teacher was a lesbian and had kids and a family of her own…the first ‘real’ queer representation I’d seen. Slowly I started to come out to people, first to my closest friend who is gay, we’ve belonged to the same theatre group for years- I’d listen to him week after week telling me about the bullies at his school who’d bully him for the fact that he is gay. Through theatre we found acceptance… anyway, back to coming out..:so I slowly started to come out to people at school and no one had a bad reaction….I said I liked girls, I didn’t want a label but I knew that to come out to my parents they’d want one, so I wrote them a note in rainbow colours saying I had a date with a girl and I was indeed a ‘homosexual’ (I was 17 at this point), I handed them the note and ran upstairs into the shower so I didn’t have to face them…they took it very well and said they loved me no matter what..:the term ‘queer’ didn’t make an appearance into my dictionary until a few months later and I wish I’d used that…but with time I hope that coming out won’t have to be a thing, that people can just be who they want to be and love who they want without it being a huge question or debate!
So yes, that’s my story…nearly a year on from coming out and people have been accepting on the whole 🙂

Katrina, 29, queer- CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT DEPRESSION.

I was thirteen when I first remember becoming aware that I was in some way different to my female friends. While they giggled and whispered about which boys they liked I noticed that I did not feel the same. I reasoned that it was likely because I found the boys immature and annoying; or perhaps I was too focused on my learning to pay them much attention, or perhaps I was a late bloomer. Whatever the reason I chose not to think too much about it.

At fifteen the devastatingly crushing realisation that I might be gay hit me. I say devastatingly crushing because up until then my understanding of the term gay was that it was only ever used as an insult. It was a label thrown around by bullies against the bullied, and it was something you actively avoided being called. I did not want to be gay. However, here I was at fifteen watching a channel 4 documentary about a family based in the city I grew up in, and it was while watching this documentary that I realised the only reason I watched every week was because I thought one of the family members was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. This realisation forced me to reflect on past behaviours and I quickly realised that when watching TV or movies I paid all my attention to the actresses rather than the actors. When idolising singers, I favoured female singers more then male. All this time I convinced myself that it was because I found them talented and relatable, and although that is true, I also couldn’t deny that I found them ridiculously attractive, something I never thought about when it came to men. So, at fifteen I realised that I might be gay. At fifteen I also realised that I needed to hide this part of me at all costs.

I had nobody in my circle of friends or family that were gay, nobody I could look up to as a healthy and real example of what it meant to be gay. The only thing I had was childhood insults and barely any TV/movie representation. Even as recent as 2005/6, LGBTQ+ media representation in the UK was viewed as a salacious thing, something for post-watershed TV that guaranteed to draw in hundreds of complaints if shown and so hardly ever was. I was petrified of what it meant to be anything other then straight, and so began the years of secrecy, self-hatred and nightly prayers for ‘straightness’. It was during this time that I resented the phrase “people choose to be gay” because it was bullshit. I actively chose to be straight for all my late teenage years, I chose to date men, I chose to kiss men, I chose to ignore the screaming voices in my head and feelings in my body that told me that kissing boys felt unnatural and forced. Everything in that time of my life felt unnatural and forced and the constant lies about who I was and what I really wanted started to take its toll.

I remember at seventeen my dad asking me whether I was gay and the reaction my body had to that question was overwhelming; my heart began racing and I started sweating as the fear caused me to adamantly deny that I was anything other than straight. Later that night I cried myself to sleep because in lying to him I had once again closed that door on my cage when there was a chance of being free. I vowed that the next time somebody asked that question I would be honest, I was too afraid to just come out and say it but next time I was asked I’d not lie. I didn’t realise it would be another four years until I was asked again.

By the time I was twenty-one the weight of this burden that I’d been carrying since fifteen (even earlier in retrospect), was so heavy that it had started to affect my mental health. I was dealing with depression, anxiety, deep shame and self-hatred. I still didn’t want to be gay but six years of pretending to be straight and praying to be straight had shown me that this identity was sticking around whether I wanted it to or not. And so, at 21 years old, and while stood in the kitchen with my dad, he asked me again whether I was hiding anything. I think he had sensed my unhappiness in the way only a parent can and was trying to find out what was causing his eldest daughter to be sad. He asked me again whether I was gay. It was clear to me then that my dad likely knew for almost as long as I did about my truth, why else would he ask me the same question twice four years apart. This time I ignored the racing heart, and dry mouth and choking sensation and I said “yeah, I think I am”.

I can’t put into words the relief that moment gave me, as adrenaline coursed through my body I immediately felt lighter. Somebody else knew my secret and the weight of it was shared. My dad was amazing about it, told me he loved me and that it never mattered to him who I loved as long as I was happy and healthy. I always knew deep down that this would be his reaction and I was relieved to find out I was right.

Regardless of whether we think our parents will be accepting doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s the fear that what if you misjudged them and their reaction, what if unknowing to you your parents held strict views against LGBTQ+ people and were disgusted and disappointed in you. The fear that I didn’t know my parents at all was what kept me closeted all those years, the fear of losing their love was enough for me to hide who I was if that’s what it took. I’m lucky that my family were accepting and loving, i know of others that weren’t as lucky. I’m almost 30 now and it’s been 9 years since I came out. I won’t lie, I’m still not fully free from the shame of being gay, I still have trouble coming out to new people or openly showing affection with a partner in public. This shame is something I recognise and that I’m working on overcoming and it does get easier as time goes on. I’m just happy to be free from that cage.

17, Bisexual girl i think?

I’ve been reading a lot of the waves that have been posted and my story is nothing compared to that, I don’t really have friends that I’ve had a crush or something. I mostly started figuring it all out through tv, I really started thinking about how much female crushes I have I cannot even think about them all and men are a few that I really find attractive.
It was 2016 when I started questioning myself deeply, I had found out my brother was gay and he was married and I didn’t even know because my dad didn’t want me to know because I guess he thought I would “turn out” gay too, which guess what dad? I am (i’m still not openly out, just 3 friends know and they have been the best about it) anyways going back to the story, I started asking myself if it was just because the actresses were just too beautiful and I wanted to be them or what, so yeah, I pushed it down saying I couldn’t like women because my parents would hate me or stuff like that (internalized homophobia is a thing and I hate it) then I would really started bringing out how hot and beautiful these girls were to a friend and obsessing over a relationship that wasn’t even real to her and she asked me and i was like yeah maybe i really don’t know and she was just really happy that I was even able to “confirm.” She really was the best and I think that if it wouldn’t have been for her I would be still pressing myself over being straight and just that. She was the OG knowing since 2017 I think I don’t really remember the exact year but anyways fast forward to this year. During quarantine I have been spending a lot of time with myself, thinking about a lot of stuff, really learning about the community and I have been having like fantasies about how would be my life if I was with a girl and I really see myself more than with a guy, not saying it wouldn’t happen but I just know I would not just be boys. The thing is that a part of my doesn’t “want” to be gay because my whole family is Catholic, like reaally into the religion, I don’t care about the “god doesn’t love you if you are gay” because I know he does, he has and always will if i keep myself close to him because he lives in my (just my opinion) but I just feel like my family wont accept the union of LGBTQ+ and God since they all are extremist (and when I say that, i’m not exaggerating) My dad has been homophobic to my brother and doesn’t really interact with my brother in law and since I am the only girl, that still can have children, (I have 2 siblings, both male, neither of them want kids and I do so) I feel like he would only focus in the women part and not think about the fact that he would still get grandchildren even if im gay or not. My mom its more “accepting” she does interact sometime with my brother in law but she is more religious than my father so I don’t know how she would take it. From my mom’s side I only have family that is extremists catholics or trump supporters which are a no no too. From my dad’s side I would have it easier but I still don’t know how they would take it.
Going back to the beginning of quarantine, I had a friend who was throwing hints or something through her facebook posts so I reached out to her and started also giving kind of hints even though at that time I still was pushing my bisexuality down, I was able to accept and say I was bi or thought and she started telling me about how she had accepted herself and stuff and that really helped me to really beginning accepting myself. Now 4 months later, all I just can say is thank you to literally all actresses out there, representing the LGBTQ+ community for helping me find myself as they also might be finding themselves or found through playing those characters although im still closeted, I feel like I have came out of my own shell.

Duda G.

I think I knew that I was a part of the LGBT2QIA+ community when I got overexcited after discovering that a character on one of my favorite TV Shows was bisexual. When I realized that I was a lesbian, after weeks trying to accept that myself, I instantly told my mom, who got a hard time accepting it. But now she completely supports me and I couldn’t be more grateful.
On school, I basically came out to one person at a time ’till all of the class knew. Everyone that I told my sexuality to was happy for me and that gave me enough courage to tell my dad and then my stepmom. I still haven’t come out to my grandparents and I’m not sure if I plan on it.
But if there’s something that I’m actually sure is that talking to other Earpers helped a lot. Simply sharing experiences and hearing their stories was something that brightened up my darkest days and helped me get through my internalized homophobia. I wouldn’t have been able to survive without my friends that offered me all of the support that I needed.

Queer!

i first realized that i wasn’t quite straight when i was 12. it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me, and i tried to suppress my feelings for a couple years before i realized that i couldn’t live my life like that.
a couple months before i turned 17, i decided to stop pretending and stop hiding. it was both the most daunting and most relieving thing i’d ever done. i was extremely lucky to have friends that graciously welcomed me into their arms, and i am so incredibly thankful for them.
people that i grew up with were forced to see that lgbtq+ do exist, and that their existence is normal. my coming out may have been uncomfortable and scary at the time, but now, i’m so proud of myself for being open and true to myself, as well as opening the eyes of people that had previously held negative ideas about the lgbtq+ community.
i’m here, i’m queer, and i fucking love people.

Learning not to Fight Myself

A lot of people seem to know that they are “different” from an early age.

I never did. Or I didn’t for years anyway.

I had so many other things I was worried about. Whether it was switching schools again, taking care of my siblings that were significantly younger than me, or just trying to settle in to another new place, boys always seemed unimportant, so the fact that I wasn’t interested in them obviously just wasn’t a big deal. “I’m busy,” I told myself. “I need to make friends, get good grades, go off to college, then I’ll have time for that.”

But I was enamored with my girl friends, here and there. They were dynamic, intelligent, powerful, beautiful, captivating. I wanted to understand them, to do things for them, to make them feel like they were seen and they mattered. I would skip out on homework to text them, crawl out onto the roof at night when I was supposed to be in bed to have long phone conversations about our hopes and dreams and fears and insecurities. I would give up sleep to hear more about the complexities that come out of a person in the dark. I resented the boys that made them feel worthless or annoying or not good enough, because how could they be so blind?

When I first figured out that dating girls was a thing that you could do, I was 15. My first thought was, “Oh no. That. I want to do that.”

I made my way through my sophomore year in a blur, for the first time fully aware of a crush while it was happening. I went to prom with a nice boy from my friend group and hid in the bathroom because I couldn’t bring myself to dance with him. I knew I was staring at a friend who would never look at me that way, and I knew I had something to confront.

In the middle of all of it, my parents sold my childhood home and announced that we would be moving from our tiny Midwestern town to a suburb of Denver. I muddled through the year, researching by consuming every piece of lesbian representation that I could find and then promptly deleting my search history. Until the day that I didn’t. Until the day my parents sat me down as asked me about it. And I told them. And they asked if I was trying to get back at them for making me move. And we decided a few months later that I would go back home to finish high school, but tell no one because it would make things too hard. Make people too uncomfortable.

I truly, publicly, came out a month after I graduated. The day that marriage equality became the law of the land in the United States, June 26th 2015, I wrote a long, thoughtful Facebook post for anyone apart from my friends and family I’d already told. My mom called me to tell me that I should have asked her first, because she was having a hard week because it was her 40th birthday. That I should have asked before I celebrated because she didn’t want to deal with questions form the family. That I could still live a life of celibacy with God.

That was the first time that I felt the fierce protectiveness for my community, for myself, for my own worth, swirl and solidify in my chest. The first time that I really recognized that I didn’t need to be my own worst enemy because the world would take care of that. I had plenty to fight. I didn’t need to fight myself. Most importantly, I was strong enough to put myself in front of anyone that wasn’t there yet, and that that’s what this community does. We defend each other. We help each other. We love each other.

Since then we’ve seen the Pulse shooting. We’ve seen half a dozen years of Pride. We’ve seen job discrimination outlawed. I’ve fallen in and out of love and back into it again. I’ve met spectacular women and men and non-binary and agender folks that have taught me the beauty of the spectrum of human expressions of gender and sexuality and love. It’s made me a better person. I’m more understanding, more empathetic, more open. I wouldn’t trade this community, or this experience of myself for anything.

I identify as “Trying”

I came out at thirteen as a lesbian. I was so convinced I only liked women as a result of severe familial trauma in my early years.

Deep, seeded trauma had kept me from being an honest person, and while I don’t use that as an excuse for my adult behavior, I understand that trauma motivated many unsavory behaviors in me until my early twenties at least. And I will have to work the rest of my life to forgive myself for the person I was when I was not honest with myself or anyone else. And that’s okay.

I allowed the fear of myself I harbored to be my sole motivator.
I feared loneliness so I remained in toxic interpersonal relationships for fear of being alone long enough to confront my own trauma.

I feared my parents, who were incapable of caring even for themselves as a result of their own never confronted traumas, thus providing me with a grocery-list of my own traumas to deal with.

I feared being adopted or thrust into the foster care system, like my siblings had been. If I was going to have to be housed, I’d rather not have had to meet new people doing it.

I feared disappointing others, mostly my religious grandparents.

I feared all men as a result of my mother’s propensity for self sabotage and men with abusive habits.

This fear has followed me for decades. I’m here because I’m not a lesbian and I don’t think I’ve formulated a coherent thought around that before now. I love love. I love all types of people. Despite what I’ve convinced myself, I am capable of great love and I am deserving of it, no matter who it’s from. I am so sorry to my younger self for forcing her into this box. I was convinced I had to pick a side to be taken seriously. I don’t. You don’t. It’s ridiculous. Be open to love in its many forms. My life has opened up greatly since I had this revelation.

I’m trying. And sometimes that’s all you can do.

Lesbian

I know I was a lesbian at age 12. I didn’t come out til I was 26. I grew up in a catholic family and being gay was not ok. I hide my true self for many years because of it. I came out to a close friend one night over drinks while getting ready fir a singing contest. I will be forever grateful to her. She loved me for me and without judgment. My family didn’t handle my coming out well. They are not apart of my life because of who I am. I have been very lucky to have great friends and family of choice who love me. I also live in a city that is very accepting and has a large LGBTQ+ community. I work at a LGBTQ+ safe space coffee house and mentor young queers, loving and supporting them over coffee.