Community Rainbow Waves

“I am enough”, Monica

I think I always knew but I denied the ever obvious signs or evidence or feelings that I had towards the same sex. By the time I did come out I had fooled the world all the while punishing and with-holding truth from myself. I came from a Republic and Catholic family and also when to Catholic School my entire life. Being told that what I was feeling was a sin and that I would most likely go to hell I quickly realized that I was worth nothing just because of those facts. As I grew I started to open my eyes to the outside world. To see the things I was always “forbidden” to see. To see beauty in something rather than the sin. I live in Seattle and when I was 21 I moved to So. Cal for a few years and it was then that I had my first kiss with a woman. It was like the darkness in me disappeared and the light that I always pushed down took its place. After a few years of So. Cal, I moved back home and had to face the truth and tell my family. I was 24 years old when I told my family and the hurt that was said, the worries, the pains, the agony, and torture came bubbling back up only to have be reinforced with a family member telling me “I wish you would’ve been a miscarriage.” Those words burned into absorbed my heart and mind for months.
I remember walking down the street one day and it hit me like a ton of bricks and for the first time in my life I asked myself “how can something like loving someone be wrong?” I then drove to my parents house and said “if you can’t accept me then you aren’t deserving enough to be apart of my life because I am a good person who desires the world to be its true authentic self in love.” Walked out didn’t speak to my family for a while after that.

I am lucky enough that my family did come around. I married my incredible wife when it first became legal in Washington State on December 8, 2012 and have never looked back. My family loves my wife as they do our two beautiful, strong, and determined daughters. I am so grateful for the road that has taken me to where I am though incredible painful, I am not sure I would be me if I hadn’t.

I so believe in this community because it is based on love. Something that should be seen, heard, and felt. I am so grateful and proud that I get to live my truth everyday. That I get to be the best of me because I now know that “I am enough.”

I am queer

I would have to say I knew I was queer when I was about 12. I found my self having a crush on my teacher. I’ve always found my self attracted to women and men, not just one gender.
Growing up in a time where it was told to be wrong. The it is ingrained in to you that you are breaking the law or that your going to hell for who you really are. Makes you afraid of what may happen if the world knows. Weather or not your going to be judged and disowned by the people you love and mean the most to you.
I went what feels like a life time lying to myself and others of who I really am. But one day I came to the point that I was done lying to myself. I don’t want to be who everyone else wants me to be I wanted to be me the true and real me. I wanted to live who ever the he’ll I wanted and not care about what others thought about me.

I came out when I was a senior in high school when I got my first girl friend. I told my dad and he was ok, he did really have a reaction at all. I was worried about telling my mother because she is my best friend and the person I looked up to the most. I feared that she would hate me and not understand me. Ao little did I know she was proud of me. She said she just wanted me to be happy and be me. I built up all this fear for who I really am when I had nothing to fear. I am grateful that I have two parents that love me and except me for me.

I know now that you can’t live in fear. Be who you are and what you want to be with everything thing that you have. Never let anyone bring you down or tell you that you can’t be you. Love who you want no matter the gender, identity, race or what ever it maybe. Be and do what make your heart sparkle. out and proud love is love!

Gay

I’ve know I was different from such a young age, but I couldn’t put a finger on what it was.I thought looking at girls and thinking they were so cool and so beautiful was normal. I idealised my friends and would do anything for them. Till I was 13. I met someone at school and thought she was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Oh shit. Am I gay? No I can’t be that’s wrong and perverse. No she’s just a friend. I like boys right….

And there started and 8 year long battle with my sexuality. It was and is the hardest battle of my life. In high school I couldn’t tell anyone for fear I would be judged, disliked, stared at or maybe even assaulted, so I kept my silence. As the years went by slowly fading into darkness and depression over something as simple as being who I was. Having to act a certain way so my friends wouldn’t find out and pretending to like boys just tore me up inside. I didn’t think I was going to survive.

But I did.

Fast forward into 2020 I’ve come out to most of my friends who all except me, who love me and say I deserve happiness. Saying those words “im gay” was so hard. My body would physically shake and my throat would choke up. I remember the first time I come out. I drove to my friends house because I was just bursting at the seems and had to get it out. She took me on a walk and I was just completely silent the whole time. Till she turned to me and asked if I was gay and I just nodded. I bursted into tears then she hugged me and said it was going to be alright, and I will be alright. I’m not out to my parents because I’m quite certain they will not except me and kick me out of my house which gives me so much pain. So at the moment I feel I have to choose between them and my happiness. I hope over time I will be strong enough to be who I am and have the support I need to get through it when the time comes for me to tell them.

My sexuality has been the hardest thing in my life. It has come with sadness, anger, guilt, depression and a suicide attempt, but I am still here, fighting everyday for my life, and I’m winning. I hope that our world will change. Where we don’t see black and white, we see colour. A rainbow. Love, everyone loving who they want and being who you want to be.

Well I’m gay…

Hello first. I am an 18 year old girl who is gay. I come from a Jewish family from Berlin. My parents are Russians, so they’re not the most open people anyway. Actually, I knew pretty early that I wasn’t really into boys, but my whole environment was absolutely against lgbt +. In general, everything that was different. So I hid my feelings and was very unhappy. Until I started looking at wynonna Earp and saw how many people had feelings similar to mine. And then I finally came out. It was very liberating for me, but the reactions were really not great. I mean my parents yelled at me first and called me a disappointment. Some of my siblings had no problem with it, but some kept their distance from then on. When I told my best friend she didn’t really have a bad reaction (I thought). but suddenly she blocked me everywhere and never spoke to me again. But it was worth it. I found new friends who accept me for who I am and I never have to hide again. I thank you Dominique. I don’t think I would have had the courage to come out without you , the show and without this community.

Gay

The start of my journey was a girl. It’s stereotypical, but that’s how it happened. I was teenager, my parents were divorcing, I wasn’t even sure the true romantic love was real. Then we kissed for the first time. No longer could their be any denial of love or my sexuality, because in that moment I knew.

When I first came out, it was as bisexual. Maybe because I still had not fully accepted who I was… or maybe because the girl was bisexual. Coming out to my friends was blissfully easy. They’d suspected for years and had never had any problems with the idea. My dad, such an open minded man, again gave me no fear. My mum though. She was unpredictable. I was so scared, that I did it via text message while we were in the same house! BIG MISTAKE. I had to wait 40mins to hear back! But when she did she told me she still loved me. It somehow didn’t give me relief. As though, she was being okay with my sexuality because she felt she had to be. In this phase in my life the biggest difficult was school. I once had a group of 30 people chanting things like: “What would Jesus say” at me. Lucky for me, someone saw. The school asked me to talk to the group and asked my opinion for appropriate punishment. So they did an assembly on inclusion.

When I later came out as a lesbian, nobody was surprised. I’d dated guys, but it was clear nothing had particularly clicked. But finally I was out for me…. or so I thought.

5 years on I was 21. I was absorbing a lot of LGBT content and I remember thinking about this in the context of myself. My gender. I’d never been what you’d call ‘girly’. When I was younger I was called “a tomboy”, but when I was older, suddenly this label disappeared and I no longer had it as inclusive context. I was just different. When I was learning about other LGBT labels, one that came up was gender neutral. Because it is one I instantly identified with. I wasn’t female…I just wasn’t male either. Then I had to come out again. It took me several years to come out with one of my friends. We disagree on many things and the concept of genders beyond cis or transgender is definitely one of these. I’d tried so many times to calmly explain how it is possible for an infinite number of sexualities and genders could be, to no avail. When I told him, he was offensive – but in a way that showed his , acceptance. We constantly talk about our differing views on multiple topics. I certainly find it difficult, at times, to remember that just because he isn’t as open minded as I would like him to be he is not a bad person. He just has different views to mine.

With gender and sexuality being constantly changes, filled with multiple aspects I can not promise that these aspects of me won’t change. This is why I like to identify as ‘gay’. I feel that it is such a broad term, I can make it fit with who I am now and who I will be in future. The story above is all to brief. You come out thousands of times! It also doesn’t include some of my darkest moments, but the main point is that as dark as things have got I am me… I wouldn’t want to change that for a second. Neither should you. Be proud of who you are, regardless of what comes your way.

Queer

Even as a small child I knew I felt a strong need to be around certain girls and women. From friends to teachers to celebrities, I would always be drawn to a woman. In those days I just thought everyone felt that way. I knew it didn’t feel especially normal cause I never really saw it anywhere, but I just thought I really enjoyed certain people’s company or really wanted to be their best friend.

It wasn’t until I was 15 when I had my first experience with another girl. It was once again a thing where I naively thought we were just incredibly close and best friends. I knew I felt very strongly for her but I didn’t really make it a sexual thing. That is until she kissed me. Finally everything made sense. Experiences I had kissing and being close to boys never felt right. But just a kiss with this girl sent my heart racing. It all made perfect sense.

I didn’t grow up in a house where LGBTQ+ folks were a bad thing. We were just ignorant to the fact that they existed. I knew queer people and I was friends with them, but I know people would not be kind about them behind their back and they were always a salacious topic of gossip in my very small town. I didn’t want to be the odd one out. I was popular, I played sports, boys liked me, so I just kept this part of me to myself. It always helped that the girl I was infatuated with lived 40 minutes away in a different town. So my worlds never needed to collide.

While that aspect of my life was a roller coaster of feelings, I was good at compartmentalising it. I focused really hard on sports and really didn’t let the whispers of me possibly being a lesbian get in the way. I also still dated boys to keep the rumours at bay for the most part.

It wasn’t until I was 19, dating a different girl secretly, that I was sort of pushed out of the closet. My mom was making dinner one night and she out of nowhere asked if I was dating the girl I was always spending time with. All of my instincts told me to lie. Just say no like I always do and move on. But that evening I said yes. My mom without skipping a beat said “honey I’ve known since you were 10. Nothing is going to change. Now do you want spaghetti for dinner” and that was that. Truly the easiest coming out I could have ever imagined. I actually hold a bit of guilt about that because I know it’s so much harder for so many others. I want them to have friends and family who let them be authentically themselves.

While I came out as a teenager, I think now as a 33yr old I’m realising that sexuality is an ever changing thing. I always identified as a lesbian until 4 years ago when I was feeling attraction to men. Last year I dated a non binary person who made me once again reconfigure my orientation. I feel like queer is a great label that I feel comfortable and proud having. I have a beautiful partner and life really is magical despite all the really tough moments.

To coin a popular term, it really does get better.

Love, light and rainbows to you all

Alycia N.

I knew for quite a while that I had weird feelings for girls that I felt like I shouldn’t be having. In middle school, I was having the hardest time feeling normal. I wasn’t having the same feelings towards boys that all my friends were having, during lunch my friends would talk about all the boys they liked, and I was making stuff up because I didn’t want to seem weird. This made me very depressed because I was unsure what was wrong with me. I would come home and watch ‘Friends’ and I always had a crush on Rachel, but I would just tell myself that every girl thinks other girls are pretty, it’s just being nice right?! Every gay character I seen on television growing up was a background character who rarely came on. High school came around and I became more depressed keeping all of my feelings in, I did not like the person I seen in the mirror. I wanted to cut my hair and wear clothes that I felt more comfortable in. During my junior year of high school, I came out to my close friend who was a boy. After I came out to him, he was very supportive. I started going over to his house a lot, because of this my mother thought I had a crush on him. She would always bring it up that we should date. My mother had gay friends and was a very supportive parent all around but it’s still very overwhelming coming out to your parents. I was lucky to have supportive parents who loved me no matter what because I know a lot of queer kids do not have that. I was still very nervous of coming out, we ended up going to an amusement park and she kept talking to me about my close friend. While we ate lunch at the park, I told her I had to tell her something important, I then proceeded to cry a lot that I couldn’t speak. She guessed “what is it, are you a lesbian?” I shook my head yes, and she then told me that she loved and will always love me no matter who I love. It was nice to have that kind of love and support from someone. After that, she made sure I was comfortable with myself, she let me cut my hair, she bought me a pride flag, I shopped in the boy’s section for clothes. I felt more confident in myself just by having that love and support and I was happy to be in the LGBTQ community. With having that lack of LGBTQ representation growing up, I am so inspired by shows like ‘Wynonna Earp’ and can’t wait to grow my career in the film industry and add more queer representation that I didn’t have growing up. It is such a positive message to see people on a big screen coming out and being authentically themselves because it shows that everyone is valid, and everyone is beautiful. I think start the wave shows so many positive messages to be kind, and be the best you, you can possibly be.

Lesbian

I first knew I was a lesbian when I was in high school. I was in love with my best friend who was a straight woman. I didn’t know how to tell her. I thought maybe she would look at me and our friendship differently. I thought maybe she would start acting different around me. So, summer before senior year of high school, I started a big fight that ended our friendship. I did that because I was too damn scared to talk to her. We reconnected a couple years ago so I told her this. She looked me and said “you could’ve talked to me. We would’ve been able to figure this out together. I’m sorry you felt this way and I’m sorry you went through this alone.” I wasn’t expecting that response at all. I’m glad we talked about it because it helped me even years later. I officially came out when I was 20. Same sex marriage become legal in Pennsylvania (born and raised in Pittsburgh) so I took to Facebook to come out. I said, “Way to go Pennsylvania! Now, I can legally marry the person that I love someday.” My friends and family accepted me. They support me. I’m extremely grateful and blessed that they do. Now, I’m 27 and couldn’t be more proud of who I am! Out and proud as my friends say! Last thing I’ll say, it’ll get better. If anyone needs to hear that, it. gets. better. I promise you!

I am a lesbian

i have always known i was different but could never understand why, untill i watched pretty little liars. it was not a really gay show, but watching a gay character come out on tv made me really question myself. do i like this? yes i did, but i shoved it down. growing up in a conservative home and being gay is not easy. so, i was straight, i totally like boys. in fact, i loved them. i forced crushes on a lot of them and was always into some boy. when i started having feelings for my best friend (a…girl), it got worse. i was so depressed, and to make thinks harder, i was getting bullied. i just couldn’t like girls. so, i have a crush on ‘random boys name’. it was a cycle. it wasn’t untill i switched schools that i started accepting myself. (it’s harder to come out to you childhood friends). anyways, at this new school, i met this girl. she was so pretty and we liked the same things. i really had a crush this time. it wasn’t just someone i decided to crush on, i really liked her. it was an intense feeling, admiting it to myself. so, i started coming out. i told my new friends i liked her. and they didn’t care. it was normal and it felt SO GOOD. i was still figuring myself out, so i kissed A LOT of men, but it never felt right. at this point, i haven’t kissed a girl yet.and when i did, i felt those butterflies in my stomach. my first thought was “wow THIS is what it feels like” and it just hit me like a bus. yes, i am a lesbian. so i started owning it. i like girls and that’s okay. and i started just telling people, mostly when i was drunk. and nobody cared. it was okay. i’m still not really out to my family, but i did told my mom and she supported me. she still says some stupid stuff or makes some hurtful comments but she is learning and that’s all she can do. and i am grateful for that it’s okay to be yourself. it’s okay.

I’m a Bisexual Woman

When I first came across Wayhaught. I did what the rest of us did and fell in love with their relationship. But I was kicking myself because I didn’t want to get in the headspace of feeling like I was lonely or sad because I wasn’t out yet. BUT I slowly realized it did the opposite. Shame started lifting off my shoulders as I watched this realistic depiction of two women in love. Who argued and kissed and cared deeply about one another. You don’t see that on tv often and you definitely don’t see it in good ole Missouri. Wayhaught, in a way, launched me to where I am today. I slowly have started to come out to my friends in the past couple weeks (found Wayhaught a year ago) and OH BABY that’s a big deal for me. It was only 4 years ago that I broke from my Christian bubble upbringing and said “fuck” with full confidence. Liberating. Lol. I feel more authentic than I ever have been in my life and I’m 22 years old. 22 YEARS OLD. I always thought I’d have it together by now. But Brene Brown quotes and all, I know it isn’t possible to always be authentic and have it all figured out. Heck, I still don’t know how to talk to pretty girls, how to do my taxes or how to do a cartwheel (idk why man it just never clicked) BUT I’m going to try. The being authentic part, not the cartwheel cause that shit is hard. You are valid, you are seen, and you are worthy of feeling your truest self friends.