Community Rainbow Waves

Happily openly gay

Today is my 31st birthday and I just wanna share my story with you.

There was this girl in kindergarten but I forgot about her eventually. Then in my early teens, when all the other girls were talking about boys, started dating and having boyfriends I just couldn’t relate to them. One day I thought having somebody special in my life would be great but it doesn’t have to be a boy. So I considered myself to be bisexual.
I was alone with these thoughts and feelings for like a year until I told some friends. They understood it but somehow they also excluded me from conversations and activities together. Plus I was bullied in school, because I was just different and I didn’t fit in. I felt alone and also depressed for some time. Back then I didn’t have a computer, no internet and no one to talk to. I kind of isolated myself for a while. I felt less alone and depressed when I watched willow and Tara on Buffy. This is why healthy same sex relationships on TV are still so important. It helped me cope.

When I was 15 I overheard a conversation between my dad and my uncle. They said homo sexuality should be prohibited and it’s not normal.
I was about to enter the living room and froze when I heard that. I went back in my room and thought I could never come out.

At the age of 16 I finally got a computer and internet access. I met a girl online, which I fell in love with. We chatted a lot, called each other, but we never met each other, since we lived kinda far apart. That’s when I came out to my mum. I just wanted to meet her in person. My mum didn’t allow it. When I came out to her she was quiet. She didn’t talk to me for three days. After that she pretended like I never told her. I don’t know if she told my dad about it back then right away or later.

We broke up shortly after eventually.

I met my first “real” girlfriend when I was 18. We were set up by friends. I was so happy and eventually brought her home to meet my parents. First just as a friend, a couple of months later I told my mum, she is my girlfriend and she was OK with it since then and we could talk more openly about it.

My grandma, who was like a second mother to me, died 2 years later. My dad didn’t allow me to bring my girlfriend to the funeral. But my older brother was allowed to bring his girlfriend, that nobody liked and also they haven’t been together for as long as we have. I think my dad still has a problem with my sexual orientation.

My first girlfriend cheated on me with my best male friend and I fell into a black hole (we also lived together by then, which made it even harder). I moved back to my parents for 3 months til I found a new place.
I thought I would never find somebody who would love me again and that maybe didn’t even deserve it. I felt the loneliness and depression again. Due to society I also thought maybe I should just try to be straight and date guys (which never happened).

Then it happened. I finally figured out there is a community, that I’m not the only one feeling this way. Talking to others, dating other women helped me come clean to myself.
Also I found the love I was always looking for. I’m openly gay and happy about it.

Even when it doesn’t seem like everything will work out, it does. Believe in yourselves. You are never alone and you deserve love.

Love is life.

You can call me B, I go by she/her and I’m a lesbian. 🙂

It’s probably not a surprise but it’s taken me quite a while to get to this point, where I’m comfortable enough in calling myself a lesbian and being able to share that to the world. But here I am. And I couldn’t be happier.
Around gr. 10, I had a tough time with friends. The year before I moved to a new city and being the shy quiet kid I am I was extremely nervous about making new friends. But I did become close friends with two people so it wasn’t that bad. Then came gr. 10, and I didn’t have any classes with either of them which sucked. By that time, everyone else seemed to have made friends and well… I wasn’t a part of that, I wasn’t really friends with them. So I just stayed quiet.
Then one day, I ended up checking out this club that I knew a few of my friends would go to every Wednesday. It was GSA. Around that time I had heard of gay people and how they weren’t very well accepted, I never understood why they faced so many hardships because it was just love wasn’t it? So then why was the Catholic community I had grown up in so unaccepting of it when all I had learned from them was how to be kind to others?
Anyways, that sparked my curiosity about the LGBTQ+ community, and along with my friends in that club and my favorite art teacher running the club, I kept going there. Soon enough it became my safe haven that year. A place that I was happy to go to every week while the rest of my school life seemed to suck.
I learned a lot from the wonderful people there. I saw what a supportive and caring community was like. Safe to say I never stopped going to GSA even after started making more friends and high school no longer felt like it was terrible.
Subconsciously, at some point, I’m not sure when I started to have this question that would randomly pop up in my head. “What if I was gay?” My continuous and automatic response to that was no, I wasn’t. That when on for at least a year, and I wouldn’t give it much thought. I would ignore it. Then near the end of gr. 12, in the last month of school, I came out to one of my closest friends. I never planned to, nor expected it. We were on a phone call and she brought up boys, and most importantly how I was talking to this boy she hadn’t met in the hallway. (Note he was asking me something about one of the other clubs I was in/running). And when she brought it up, I just felt this gut feeling that this idea seemed… wrong, I had that feeling is several other occasions when my friends would talk about boys. So I took a deep breath and said, “I think I like girls.”
At the time I wasn’t sure because I never liked a girl before, but I had a lot of female celebrity crushes the same way that girls my age had crushes on Zac Efron for example. Looking back now, I remember I tried liking a few celebrity guys, like Brad from the Vamps. But it never came with as much ease as it did with liking Selena Gomez or Olivia Holt. I felt like I was in a way forcing myself to like him.
Sure there were a few actual guys I said I had crushes on, but I think they were just what I thought as a crush at that time, something I now call an admiration crush. One where I looked up to that guy and would want to hang out with him a lot, but never really thought about relationship stuff. Because honestly the idea of girls liking girls never really occurred to me, until I discovered this ship on my favorite show Supergirl. Kara and Lena. Easily I developed crushes on both actresses and loved the idea of their characters getting together. I finally had representation.
That grew more when I started watching Wynonna Earp and One Day at A Time. And yes, I did solely watch those shows because I discovered Wayhaught and that Elena was a gay character. I started to feel more okay with the idea of liking girls.
That summer, I also told one of my other closest friends that I liked girls. The two of them were the best about it. Which was great because they were the friends I was going to university with. The place I decided I would let myself explore this and see if I really did like girls.
Surprise, surprise, I do. I developed a crush on this girl. I finally experienced an actual crush, with the whole feelings thing. Yes, that whole “your heart races around them and you can’t seem to form words” thing I discovered is real.
Then I started to come out to a handful of people, the friends that I wanted to know, that I felt safe telling. Then even two of my cousins. I’ve gotten lucky because I have yet to experience losing a friend because of my sexuality. It may happen later on when I am fully out, but I now have a group of people who do accept me for who I am and will be there for me no matter what.
Then, one day with some advice. I gave myself before winter break to try and ask her out. (I know, a lesbian girl who’s an introvert asking someone out. That must be new lol.) On the third day, the chance came up and I did. I took the risk. She got back to me after winter break, and well, I got rejected.
Even though things didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped with her, thanks to her I got the courage to come out to a lot of important people in my life and I’ve never been more sure about liking girls.
Heck, I got a pair of Doc Martens and a friend gave me rainbow suspenders. (And added to my already large collection of flannels). Never in my life had a simple thing such as clothes made me so happy and confident in myself. It was refreshing and absolutely amazing.
So now here I am. Happy and more confident. No longer as shy as that girl in gr. 10. I went from someone not knowing why we stated our pronouns during GSA meetings to being proud of being part of the community. I’ve grown a lot in the past few years, and especially this year.
Right now, the only part that scares me, is telling my family. Especially my parents. They are both aware of the community, know I went to GSA, and have seen gay people on shows and movies. But it’s different when it’s your kid. I’m sure a lot of you who are part of the community understand that. I know that they won’t kick me out or anything, but I’m still scared. I know I will finally tell them one day when I’m ready. But for now, I’ll just be in my room watching my gay movies.
Anyways, I hope my story helped you with whatever part you are in your journey or made you feel less alone in all of this. I just wanted to share my story with all of you whoever you are, however you identify, and whoever you love. Remember there will be people who have your back that you can lean on even if that won’t be everyone. It takes time to figure this out, so take your time, there’s no rush. And you don’t have to come out to people until you feel safe to do so and when you feel it’s the right time. Even to your parents. Your journey is your own.
Be authentically you, because when you are “you are all the colours in one, at full brightness,” (-all the bright places).
Sending you my rainbow love, B.

QUEER

I started thinking I was into girls when I entered 6th grade and this girl just made me feel different. I questioned my sexuality for while not really knowing if I just wanted to be her friend or if I liked her. And then after I finally knew I definitely like women I started wondering if I even liked boys plus now I knew there was also non-binary people and was so confused !
But I just wanted people to know I wasn’t straight so I came out to one of my friends when I was 14 and slowly people on my grade ever assumed I liked girls or heard it from someone. No one made fun of me or bullied me and I’m so grateful for all the lgbtqia people who made it possible for that to happen.

And last year I came out to my parents on my 16th birthday and they kind off already know my dad’s response was actually « we know you like girls » sooooo guess I wasn’t really subtle but I like to see it as my parents quietly watching grow and understand myself.

So yeah I’m pretty lucky and to be truthful the only real problems I’ve had are with my own insecurities. I just don’t really talk that much about my sexuality because it feels like I’m taking to much place so I have to sit through my straight brother explaining homophobia to me (and my family, he definitely an ally I just don’t always feel like I’ve experienced enough to actually debate about it with him )

I am so happy that there are safe spaces like this for the community and I just want to say that if the people around aren’t accepting of your sexuality they’re the problem and you are beautiful and strong and loved

My name is Gaby and I´m Queer

Hi guys my name is Gaby, I have 23 years old and I from Venezuela but I live in Argentina.

so here goes:
I started to feel strange when I was very young, when I have 10 I started to realize that I was attracted to one girl in my school something that not happened to me with boys, it was a stange felling it scared me a lot I studied in a religious school and my family were very traditional So what they had instilled in me since I was little was that those feelings I was having were VERY BAD because of that I made my feelings go aside I grew up trying to ignore what I felt, I knew that something was different in me and that kept scaring me a lot, I did not talk to anyone, many nights I cried and told myself that it could not be like this, God going to punish me and that My mom would suffer a lot, so I kept ignoring that feeling and hid it pretty well until I fell in love. I fell in love with a girl without realizing how it happened, but it was what I felt, I do not know what happened to me, but one day I woke up and told myself that I could not continue deceiving myself, that I could not let go of my happiness because of people think bad about me, so I dared to be myself, it was not easy to accept me but when I decided to talk to my friends they supported me 100%, gave me strength, I started to read and see lgbt characters on tv what made me inspire me more and more and make me feel great, YES I am different and what? being different is AWASOME.

Time passed and I decided to come out the closet with my mom, I can swear that it has been the most hard and sad moment for me, she cried a lot, got angry to the point of calling the who was my girlfriend at that time and demand her that she move away from me I was a minor (16 years to be exact), that night I felt extremely bad I came to feel very guilty for all the pain my mom was feeling, for my mom, being a lesbian was the same as being a drug addict, coming out with my mom it was not nice, but I must say that it is the best thing that I could do, After several visits to the psychiatrist, many conversations, and all the information my mother sought about homosexuality, today my mother has become my greatest support. hearing from my mother “You are my daughter, I love and accept you as and as you are “is the most gratifying and beautiful thing that has happened to me, she supports me, she loves me as well as she also loves my girlfriend (The love of my life), little by little I was telling my cousins ​​and aunts my truth and I The only thing I have received is love and support, now and after several years (I am 23 years old) I can say that I am a free woman to love whoever I wantand with all the confidence to shout it out to the world, thank you To my mother who despite being from another era and being a traditionalist, put love for her daughter before everything, thanks to my friends for always supporting me, thanks to the fact that we now have good and incredible LGBTQ representation on TV, I must thank the universe for putting such amazing people in my life. I really hope that if you are reading this it will help you, that you understand you are not alone, that the world is a beautiful place, love always win because LOVE IS LOVE and love is what moves the world.
Be BRAVE, be STRONG, be HAPPY and FREE.

This was my story, thanks for letting me share it with you

PD: Dom. I am so happy for you. I would like to thank you for always inspiring me. Your light makes others shine.

Start the wave.

I’m Lesbian

Forgive me but I don’t speak English very well.
Since I was a little girl I had attitudes that couldn’t tell you otherwise, like playing with children and despising “little girl” games, like getting away from soccer or toy cars just to go with the most beautiful little girl in the neighborhood! Of course at that age I didn’t realize anything and didn’t pay attention to it but now I remember that I really thought that little girl was beautiful and that’s why I wanted to be near her.
Growing up, I was always the little girl who defended her friends, who took care of them, who did the heavy work for them like carrying the heaviest backpack or opening jars, who accompanied all of them to their homes and then came back alone… But yet I was getting engaged to boys, admiring the billboards of shirtless boys…why? Because it had to be that way!
I slept with a few guys and every time I was disappointed with the feelings I was feeling, I thought he wasn’t the one… I would try again to be with another guy but nothing!
At the age of 17 I realize that I feel a strong attraction towards a friend of mine, to be jealous in an abnormal way for a friendship! So I decide to try to understand more by surfing the internet… and at the vision of two girls kissing I feel much more sensations than those experienced in bed with a man… so I understand that I am a lesbian!
My coming out happened only after I suffered from panic attacks, every time I talked about myself… I remember that, one day I got so strong, that I called the ambulance and, the paramedic, after giving me an IV of tranquilizer, told me that the only cure was to talk about what I had inside with someone. After that day, I decided I had to do that starting with my friends…. I remember when I told my best friend… it took me half an hour just to be able to say “I like girls”… she burst into tears and called me an idiot because I had made her worry and she had come to think of serious things such as having suffered violence! I had taken a huge weight off my shoulders… so, if my best friend didn’t see anything wrong with it, I wouldn’t have minded anyone else’s judgment! I decided not to hide it anymore and to admit my homosexuality!
Fortunately I have parents who have never given me any problems… my mother, when I told her, made me understand that she thought it was just a phase, but she has always known the girls I have been with, treating them not as my friends but for what they were: my girlfriends! Now, after having brought a lot of them home, seven years later, I think she has understood that it is not just a phase 😅!
I have always been free to be myself thankfully!
However, I too have been through horrible situations recently… i.e. not being accepted by my current girlfriend’s family, being insulted by her mother and sister with phrases like “what is this crap?!” “if you are like this it’s because your mother wasn’t close to you but I was close to my daughter so I don’t accept this crap!”… or, something even more painful, that even now, a year and a half later still hurts so much, being beaten by her father claiming that I was ruining his life and family! Or, when they sent my girlfriend to the other side of the country to try to get her away from me … but I, after a month, I went to her, making her a surprise and I found the aunt angry that did not stop insulting me … who told me “but look in the mirror … do not you disgust you?!” “I’m going to slap you” “who knows what kind of person you are”… instead she should thank me because I was too respectful and polite, unlike her… if I were not a good person, I would have slapped her!
In this whole situation I have suffered too much… even going against my principles, when I didn’t denounce them!
Now we have been engaged for a year and nine months… they haven’t made any more scenes like that but they don’t want to have any kind of relationship with me… and this hurts me so much every day because I don’t understand how they don’t want to know the person who makes their daughter happy and I don’t understand how they can’t give me the chance to show that I am a respectful, polite person with great values.

Forgive me if in the end instead of telling I ended up venting….

Anonymous – Pansexual

I knew I was part of the community when I was 7 because I had crushes on both genders but I was scared to tell anyone and specifically my family. And I am still scared to tell my family to this day. Unfortunately, because of this barrier / secret I have, I became emotionally distant from them since I was around 13. I told a couple of my close friends when I was 15-16 and they were all accepting of it. Luckily I lived in a diverse city but my immediate family / community are very close minded. Growing up, although my friends knew, I didn’t really have a community I can rely on. So, I’m so glad to have found Wynonna Earp because Earpers and the community helped me discover and accept who I am. I was scared to even say the phrase “I am queer” to anyone before Earpers. Now, I say it quite often and hopefully one day I will have the courage to say it to my family. So, thank you Earpers and Wynonna Earp for the community.

Gay/lesbian

The signs probably started showing when I was 10, but I didn’t have the courage or freedom to admit this to myself until 16. Becoming self-aware was a whole other milestone that caused stress, anxiety and depression because I didn’t know how to deal with it alone.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, the first person I came out to was my brother, and I did it by email when he was in the room next to mine. I remember shaking and crying when I hit send. I told him not to reply because I didn’t want to know if he hated me for who I was, but he stepped into my room to hug me as I broke down. This gave me the courage to tell my friends, who already knew and were just there waiting for me to be ready. I felt blessed and so lucky that the people around me accepted me and still loved me the same way.

So I eventually told my mum, and she cried – not out of happiness, but disappointment. She told me she was disappointed and I can still remember the physically pain that hit my chest till this day. I don’t think I could ever forget the way it made me feel when the most important person in my life didn’t want to understand me. Even now, it’s something we brush underneath the rug and it still destroys me. My own father (who I don’t have a good relationship with) is still stuck in his own traditional ways of thinking. He’s pointed to a TV screen with LGBTQIA+ people and told me that ‘these people are disgusting and don’t deserve to get married’, so I’ve decided he doesn’t deserve to know me.

For as good as the world is, it’s still hard to comprehend that those who don’t accept us are not actually bad people.

Kaleen’s Journey

Your personal journey to finding yourself¬–whether you’re queer or not¬–is a universal thing we all experience. As unique and individual those journeys may be, the feelings and emotions are something we all share, and I find that to be so beautiful!

Love is love, hurt is hurt, heavy is heavy, hard is hard, joy is joy. Remember we all experience these things together and no one should judge anyone’s story and compete over struggles, but rather find connections and how much we all share as people. Let’s all continue to grow, love and support each other and continue this wave of self-love and discovery!

So that said, I would love to share my experience publicly for the first time, in the hopes it helps someone else find their truth. <3

I’m Kaleen and I identify as lesbian, queer and gay. I am 28 years old and I’m an art director and actress in San Francisco. For me, and I’m sure many of you, finding myself and accepting myself are two very different things and came at very different times in my life. Next week, I proudly celebrate my 4 year wedding anniversary with my amazing wife (we’ve been together for over 8 years) so my story has a very happy ending! But it definitely didn’t start that way.

For most of my life, I did not realize I was gay. I didn’t even consider it as an option. I grew up in a religious household with a mother who I believe after years of therapy to have Borderline personality disorder (BPD). It was not a healthy or emotionally safe environment for me. I truly believed that I was just an amazing Christian who was waiting till marriage (for you know)… but waiting was super easy for me because I had ZERO desire to be intimate with a man. Even when I had boyfriends and would kiss them, I would find myself counting down the seconds till it was over. I truly thought everyone felt this way and it was something I would learn to like and we all just have to get over that hurdle of disgust. I would see my friends falling head over heels for their boyfriends and wonder how they got over that hurdle, and think I’ll get there soon too… that day didn’t come for me.

Knowing myself now and looking back, there were so many “clues” that I was gay, but it still did not cross my mind. I remember watching the show House and there was an episode when Olivia Wilde’s character, Thirteen, came out as bisexual. The scene where she kissed another woman, I remember rewinding and watching it a few times. This was one of the first times I’d seen this on T.V. and it was the start of my eyes opening into what is possible. This is why representation is SO important!

Fast forward to college. This is when my life flipped on its head! I found myself in a relationship with a man and we got engaged (for his privacy, I will call him John). He was a wonderful human, and I truly thought I was “in” love. I did love him, but just not the way he deserved to be loved, and not the way I deserved to experience it. At this time, I also built a wonderful friendship with a girl and we became best friends. When I got engaged to John, something in me snapped because my mind knew that eventually I will have to have sex with this person. This tossed me into a deep depression and in doing so, also opened my eyes to a past I had bolted shut. I realized all in one moment, that I was gay, in love with my best friend, and I also had PTSD with memories of being sexually abused by a family member for half my childhood flooding my mind, all while going to school full time and holding a job to pay rent. It was a lot to discover all at one time and I felt completely overwhelmed and alone. The only person I felt comfortable sharing all these pieces of myself with was my best friend Kay. Little by little I had to confront and try to accept all these things happening in my life.

At this time, I asked John to give me space. He understood that I was having trouble with my PTSD and needed to distance myself from him. We were fully separated for over 3 months with no communication as I worked to find myself again and heal from my past.

Kay was patient and helped me heal, and through all this we became unbelievably close. At this time, she was not out as gay either. Funny enough, we did not even realize that our relationship was different than other girl/girl relationships because it felt so natural to the point we didn’t stop and ask ourselves if this was “normal”. Needless to say, we figured it out together. At this point, I still wasn’t sure if I was going to allow myself to live an authentic life because I knew in doing this, I would lose family. Before I said yes or no, I gave myself one day to openly (in the privacy of my home) love Kay and acknowledge how we felt for one another. We spent the day just holding each other, laughing, and enjoying how we felt. As the clock drew near to midnight, our hearts began to sink as we knew we only had this moment. To this day, I can’t watch All Dogs Go To Heaven because that was on in the background. We shared one last amazing kiss and then walked into separate rooms. Oh, did I not mention we were also roommates! Yeah… that made things even harder!

Days turned into weeks of me pretending like I could live without her, till I just couldn’t take it anymore. I decided I would let myself be gay if, and only if, my sister could be ok with it. Lucky for me, she was open to trying to understand. It was at this point I officially ended my engagement with John. I returned the ring and we had a wonderful moment of thanking each other for all the good times and wished nothing but happiness and healing to one another. A few months after this, I began my first true relationship with Kay.

I came out to my family and my father and stepmom were amazingly supportive and even helped pay for my therapy during all this, but my mother would not accept my truth. She said to me “I would rather you be unhappy in this lifetime, but forever happy in the kingdom of god” and asked me to deny myself love and live alone. I gave myself the best gift I could and will ever give and decided to fully embrace my love for Kay regardless of what this person thought. It was hard, it’s still hard to think about, but it’s what was best for me. Years later when we became engaged, my mom officially removed herself from my life and we haven’t seen or spoken since.

Like I said in the beginning of the story, Kay and I have now been together for over 8 years and we are about to celebrate our 4 year wedding anniversary on April 2nd. She is my absolute best friend and I don’t have words for how much I love her. She is the first time I have experienced unconditional love, and I value her with everything I am. Deciding to accept myself and live an openly gay life is the best decision I’ve made for myself and it’s a privilege I will never take for granted.

I wish everyone who reads this love and acceptance within themselves. You are love, you are here and you stay. Xoxo

Being brave: a longlife lesson I’m still on my journey to learn…

All of my life I’ve known I like girls, even since I was just a little kid. But it didn’t matter to me that much because, as a kid I didn’t realize what that exactly meant. But then I got older… and as many other people must identify with (specially in latin countries): struggling with the fact that I come from a “macho culture” country as Guatemala, growing in an evangelical family, religious closed-minded-violent society, being the daugther of a respectable Doctor known by a lot of people, and belonging to a respectable family… and so on… those things over the years made me just (as Dominique wrote) suppress it, to the point that, for many years I tried to convince myself that it was absolutely not acceptable and I had to change and hopefully someday God would have enough mercy on me to change me, and if it didn’t happen, then I must just stay single for the rest of my life instead of having a homosexual relationship. Because it was not a good thing for my family, it was not a good thing in God’s eyes, because it is just wrong… and still at the eve of my 36’s I struggle so hard with those thoughts (that I know are not okay)… because that’s what I was taught.

Too many years have passed and.. yeap, I still like women, more than ever, and I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I definitely don’t have the same perception of life that I had 10, 15 or 20 years ago. And it makes me so sad to think that I have wasted so many years of my life where I could have just enjoyed and lived my sexuality freely without caring of what others would say, or think, but I’m working on it now, I think it’s never too late.

My coming out story though is not a happy one, back in 2009 I met a beautiful lady at work (we knew each other by sight only, from church and because our families also were old acquaintances… just imagine that). We started dating and we fell in love so deeply, we were together for almost 5 years, but of course we kept it secret for obvious reasons, even when we were not that young anymore (she was 28 and I 26) we were still so scared, we shared the same background, so at least, being with someone who understood the situation so well was kind of a comfort. Anyways, one day her brother (a total a.h.) saw us kissing and told their parents, and their parents talked to my parents, and as if we were children, they met to decide what they were going to do about it… that was the breaking point to our relationship, we tried to stay together but it got just so hard to confront them (not to mention, she had a daughter and it made it so much difficult)… well… just not to extend on this, we finally broke up. Didn’t speak for years… she got married last year and I’m still single.

I’m about to turn 36 and even when I came out to my friends a long time ago, and all of them were very supportive… the situation with my family injured my heart and soul, so deep, and since we were never that open with each other, my parents and I never talked about the subject after that incident. So it felt like it never happened, and if it made them feel calmed, that was enough for me. My two sisters, thank God have been such a bleesing, they’ve been my supporting point, otherwise I would’ve gone crazy.

And well… why now? Why am I deciding to write this down? I’ve never talked to anyone about all this… and so many things have happened in the last years, that I just feel overwhelmed, but the breaking point to me was on last december, when I lost my mom due to cancer, since then, I’ve been having so many regrets, because back in those days when they found out I was a lesbian, she was so hurt that she didn’t talk to me for a couple of weeks, and I tried to understand and not being angry at her, and she wrote me a letter (that I still keep with me) asking me to open up to her and talk to her about my feelings… and I never did, because I felt so guilty and bad, and I just didn’t want to hurt her more, I mean, I mistakenly thought she had more important things to worry about, I was a grown up girl after all so I just decided to deal with it on my own… and now I realize I should have done it… maybe I wouldn’t have felt so alone. Maybe, having done it many years earlier, I wouldn’t have to go through that painful stage of my life where I just found comfort in alcohol and trying to stay away from home… I mean, it wasn’t their fault after all.

And here I stand, trying to take babysteps on being brave enough to embrace my true self, and living my life the way it makes me happy… trying to get rid of the religious ideas implanted on me, trying to find that confidence to open up to my dad (who is and has always been a good man and a good father… but old fashioned)… and I don’t know how long it’s gonna take me, but I finally decided, it’s time to stop suppressing, it’s time to start being myself around my people… I’m still so so scared of hurting my father and dissappointing him, but I just can’t keep living like this anymore. So I’m doing this for me.

I apologyze if I’m not so eloquent in my writing, but I just took this space as a liberating point of all the things I carry with me, don’t even know if someone’s going to read it, but I just needed to get it out of my head for a change.

Blessings to everyone.

That Tall Redhead – CONTENT WARNING: This coming out story contains description and/or discussion about self-harming behaviour and suicide.

Oh boy oh boy what an adventure it has been. My story is not yet over, unlike many of my companions I have met along the way. So, I would like to tell their stories too.

Beautiful humans they were, always the ones that made me smile and forget my own plights even if just for a second.

My first queer friend I had was a girl I met in grade school. She was so full of colour and life, the teachers always commented on her smile. She was my best friend and trouble makers we were. Year after year though, I witnessed her colour fade and her smile become forced. I never even knew she was queer until rumors began dancing around school. It was a small minded town, with small minded tendencies. And I too, fell into its trap. Different was bad, the whole Adam and Eve schmuck. My parents told me to stay away from her, but why? I couldn’t figure out. I was told to be mean to her because she wasn’t right, but I couldn’t do that. She had been my best friend for years. So very quickly the girl that could make everyone smile made everyone turn away in disgust, oh the irony of just wanting to love. I followed my parents orders when I knew I should not have, but at the time I was more terrified of them than losing a friend. Blood is thicker than water after all. She confronted me in the restroom one day, begging me to not go and leave her like everyone else had. My heart was breaking for her, my best friend. I still did not understand really what the problem was, I just knew that everyone else was not okay with it. I remember very vividly looking at her in that moment. She looked so scared and frightened, but also… resolved. I said nothing to her, I did not know what to say. And the next day, her parents found her body with deep slashes across her wrists. I had lost my best friend due to the ignorance of others. I often wonder if I had said something to her in the restroom that would have changed her mind. The most disturbing thing about it all is, thugs went back to “normal” after her funeral. Her parents took her younger brother and moved across the country. Where there were no whispers of a gay little girl that committed suicide. To everyone else, those were two of the largest sins to be committed. For me, I just missed my friend.

Riley was a light, a beacon that shone brighter than anyone else I’ve ever met. And it’s a tragic tale that her light was snuffed out. Now, years down the line I still remember her face. Sometimes it haunts me, other times she makes me smile. But overall, I feel the resolve too. Not the resolve to end life but the resolve to make it better. No one should go through what she went through.

At the ripe age of 16 I met a boy that was as smart and brilliant as they come. I was not as close to him as I was Riley, but he was a companion none the less. Instead of knowing him for years however, I only had the pleasure of knowing him for 5 months. Because that summer, he came out to his parents as gay and the cycle that began 4 years prior with Riley started all over again. The whispers, the shunning. The whole mess of it. I saw his brilliant mind become clouded with darkness after that and I went to him. Begging him not to do it because there was so much out there outside of that hellhole town. I thought I got through to him, I really did. I did not want to lose another friend. But two weeks later I still did. And the world lost another bright light. He could’ve found the cure to cancer, or found a eco friendly renewable energy source. He had the smarts for it. But like the fate of many others, we will never know.

I have known many that I will never know again and that no one else will ever meet. Too many. This world seems to be shrouded by hatred and darkness. No one is willing to just help each other. I used to think that, and sometime I still do when I’m in a bad place.

When I was 16, the winter after losing him, I began to feel things that I had always suppressed. It was terrifying. If anyone had found out then no doubt I would succumb to the same fate as my friends. So I told no one what I thought, I lied to my family and friends and even to myself. My whole community. I was depressed for years because I was constantly suppressing myself. University though, that was a godsend. At 18 I left my small little town and went to the city. Still though, I never said anything. That is until my lab partner began freely expressing his interest in men. It was quite the shock, to actually witness it. I began to feel somewhat…. safe. Not accepted, seeing as I myself had not yet vocalized anything. But safe nonetheless, nothing bad had happened to him and there he was freely expressing himself. I began doing my research. To figure what I really was and maybe help explain why I was feeling what I was feeling. I had never been able to do that when I was younger thanks to my parents consistant monitoring. But with public university computers, well, anything is possible. I learned more about the queer community in that single semester than I had about anything else. It made me feel… light, and airy.

I was having a conversation with my roommate and some friends during my second semester about sports. We were out at lunch when I was asked if I played any when I was younger. I told them I played a lot of different sports, but softball was my longest running one fo 14 years until an injury took me out. It seemed like a normal conversation, I thought nothing of it. Until I heard “Oh wow, are you a lesbian then?” My head jerked up from my turkey sub and against my own consent I became very nervous and shaky. I stumbled out the question “what do you mean?” To which I was then provided with the answer that it was stereotypical that lesbians played softball and nothing was meant by it other than a joke. But that joke rang in my head like a bell for weeks. Was I a lesbian? I had never really admitted anything to myself before. Did I have to?

Years after, I came to understand that I didn’t. No label is necessary to be happy, some people go by them and others don’t. Half of one, dozen of another really. I found happiness within myself because I realized that as long as I knew who I was then everything would be okay. More than anything, I wish I could go back and express this to those that I have lost. Perhaps then my friend Riley would still be here. But I cannot change the past, just the future. It’s all we can really do. I do not want to place any more flowers or premature headstones and I doubt anyone else does either.

So, my friends, if you are in a troublesome place where you do not know what to do or say- just breathe. Everything will be okay. Keep your head up, this is only the beginning. And for the sake of my lost comrades and many others that no longer shine with us, do not give up. For the fight has only begun. We are all human and we all deserve the right to love and be happy, regardless of what we identify as. Do not be afraid.

Best regards,

That Tall Redhead <3

Oh, and remember- the actual saying is “blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” 🙂