Community Rainbow Waves

Came Out at 30- CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT SUICIDE.

Where do I start ? My childhood. I was a quiet, shy and lonely girl, raised in the middle of two siblings so nobody cared about me. I was not old enough to be heard and not young enough to be understood. So I just did what I had to do : nice girl, be graduated, find a job and live with a man. Typical hetero-normal life until I met this woman at 28 years old. She was so beautiful, so gay, so engaged and so not interested by me. But it was too late I was hooked.
I spent so many sleepless nights asking myself why… not why this gorgeous unsensitive woman… no, why NOW ??? Why not 15 years earlier ? Why not with my Best friend ? Why at the worst moment of my life ? So many why-s for one obvious Because : because life is a constant challenge, it sucks, it is hard and complicated all the time. Life is such a journey, you don’t understand everything in the moment. Life is also full of joy and beautiful people if you know where to look.
And because of course you felt for other girls and women before but you didn’t know what it was…

A couple of years before I started to question about my sexuality, my cousin died. We grew up together, he was my other half, we were different and similar at the same time. I played sport, he played music. I teached him sport he teached me music. He was gay, I was straight. He killed himself. He could not stand to be different.
I spent all my energy to be angry, to feel guilty and sad, i was a wreck. With a useless boyfriend who thought I could grieve for one month and get back to normal. But normal never came back, I miss him every freakin’ minute, and I am about to meet a woman who will make a mess with my life.
I am still grieving and now I am gay ?? What’s next win the lottery and lose the ticket ?

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you” (Joseph Campbell) the sentence that changed my life. So I gave up my sooo booooring straight life to focus on me and only me. Life gave me the opportunity to meet bunch of people who really looked like the Earpers community. A safe, non-judging and very gay-friendly group with whom I travelled the world. I didn’t want to in the first place but I felt home with them and it was so gooooood !!!!! So good to finally speak to someone who listens.

I came out at 30 to my Best friend and she is still the best. I didn’t came out to my parents, my girlfriend did. She thought she was the one so obviously she made decisions for me. I kept my family but not her, she was so wrong !
My family agreed with only one sentence : “if it is your choice it is okay.” That was it, we never talk about the “room-mate” sensitive subject. It is taboo even if they truly think it is not.
I know it takes time to deal with it.

Work in progress

Firstly I would like to say to Dom, I am so glad you have found your truth and I wish you all the happiness in the world.

I believe I have also found my truth but I’m not sure if it will ever be uncovered but i’m working on it!

I grew up in the 80s & with parents who didn’t talk about “that sort of thing”

When i was at high school which was an all girls school, I played a lot of sport (& still do) & I was always trying to impress the girls (& still am lol) but I always came back to thinking it was wrong and that it was expected to find a nice boy and get married etc. But that never happened!

I’ve always been very body conscious & so I wasn’t very confident in speaking to men and I wasn’t one for going out much either.

A couple of years ago I came across “Wynnona Earp” & I loved it from the very 1st episode but especially Waverley and Nicole. I’m a little bit obsessed with their relationship & i often think that I would love to have a relationship like that. Think turning 50 also made me realise it was time to think of myself and what I really wanted.

However, I still haven’t told anyone & if i am honest I am scared to. There have been a couple of times that I’ve thought about discussing it with a friend who is gay & also a couple of my best friends but i always chicken out. I am thinking that i will when/if i meet that special someone but until then just keep quiet.

This is the 1st time I’ve really opened up about my feelings & it feels good & I have Dom, Kat, “Wynona Earp” & the fandom to thank for that.

Attending my first ever con last year and being amongst such an amazing community made me realise that this is the right path for me.

Lesbian- CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION ABOUT BULLYING AND DEPRESSION.

When I was nine I had a crush on a girl in my class. I would get a sick fizzy feeling in my stomach everytime I saw her. I never liked boys and as I grew older and more sexually aware I knew I was different from everyone else. Unfortunately this put a target on me and I was bullied throughout high school. I became closed off and depressed because I wanted to be like everyone else, what society classed normal. I hid my sexually away from everyone until I was 23. Unlike me my little brother who is also gay wore his sexuality on his sleeve he never cared what anyone thought and gave me the courage to accept myself for who I really am. So i took a deep breath and told my mum i was gay and she smiled. She said she had known who I was since I was 4 and only wanted to kiss girls while playing kiss chase. Now as I near my 40th birthday I am out, i am married to the most beautiful woman in the world and i am happy.

I’m a trans-masculine nonbinary lesbian.

I realized that I liked women when I was thirteen. I recognized it and came out as bisexual when I was fourteen years old. I came out for the first time on 3/29/20. I kept searching for labels that fit better after realizing that bisexuality didn’t fit me. I began experimenting with they/them pronouns and my attraction to men decreased very quickly. I chose a new name for myself and began using they/them pronouns. I began identifying as a lesbian, and came out as a lesbian in June 2020. In July, I came out as nonbinary. I started dressing masculine and I felt a lot more comfortable. I was not accepted by my family after coming out, and I struggled with undiagnosed depression and anxiety and possibly ADHD. Even though I was out of the closet, I still struggled with internalized homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality. My family continues to deadname and misgender me, despite all my efforts to correct them and get them to use my correct name and pronouns. I began to self harm to cope with gender dysphoria and my family’s rejection of my identity. I still live with my family and I am not currently able to get away from them or move out. Seeing the state of the country that I live in, and how it treated people like me worsened my feeling of hopelessness. My story does not have a happy ending yet, but I want to live to make it better. I am human. I’ve got goals, and dreams, and hopes. I am not just my past, and I am not just my trauma. I want to become an actor. I want to have a family one day. I want to adopt kids when I get older. I can’t wait to make some of my dreams come true.

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…

Living freely with all my colours

I started to Wonder about my sexuality at around 13 years old, I had always thought that everyone was very attractive? Like everyone whether it was male, female or non-binary i never really cared as long as I liked them.

But at 13 I didn’t know what pansexuality was soo I just thought I was bisexual?

I tried to hide it until I was 16, between 13 and 16 I had been with one girl and was starting to see a non-binary person.

I was so tried of hiding myself from my parents but the thing is that I was SO scared.

I wanted to come out so bad to finally be free and myself, and here in Switzerland they’re pretty nice with the LGBTQ+ community but my family is italian and from where they are it’s not that acceptable..

One day I took my chances and wrote a letter that i left on my mother’s desk and went to school.

At the end of a science class I remember being so nervous to check my phone, but when I did I saw that I had a text from my dad and one from my mom.

I opened them after a little freaking out and they just said that they didnt care and would love me no matter what, and that I’ll always be their babygirl.

And what do you know, today when my mom sees something rainbow she takes a picture and sends it to me which I find very cute.

On the 13th april 2020 it will be my coming out one year anniversary and wow.

Life is so much happier when you’re authentic to yourself.

I am very thankful to be in a very accepting space, whether it’s ALL my friends or my family, I know I am very lucky.

I am so thankful to be able to live the life I live and love who I want to love. But i probably wouldn’t have had the strength of coming out if i had not seen such good LGBT representation, like Waverly and Nicole and others..

I am out and free and I wish you all, reading this, to be happy and don’t forget that you do not owe anyone a coming out. Only do it if you feel like you are safe.

Take care of yourself. I’m proud of you.

Homosexual, Panromantic

I come from a religious family, practically raised in a church. I had gay family and in my head with my teachings that was fine for them to live that way but I could never choose that because it was wrong. I had thought it was a choice. Until the 8th grade when my best friend came out, and slowly through conversations she had made me realize that I too was possibly part of the LGBTQA+ community. Even then some part of my brain desperately wanted to be straight, knowing that my family likely wouldnt accept me. I’d pray and I’d pretend that if I just didnt act on that side of me then it would go away. In high school I became friends with somebody who was pansexual, lots of people actually but this one happened to be a senior while I was a freshman. She asked me very outright while we were alone if I was attracted to females. This came as a shock but I found myself answering yes. Still believing myself to be bisexual. By the end of the year I had wrote a poem about my sexuality, and posted it over Facebook. Surprisingly most people were incredibly supportive. However, my aunt had called to tell me how proud she was of me and ended up outting me to my mother. Who was less than understanding, I was grounded and forbidden from hanging out with friends the night of prom. (She wouldnt allow girls to really sleep over anymore either.) It took until senior year for me to come to terms with and realize that I was just simply not physically attracted to men. Which is when an uncle I had only met as a toddler came up. He came out to my father, and then proceeded to out me. My father is very religious and often used gay, queer, and fag as insults. He never talked to me about it, but I noticed he changed his language around me. When we accidentally ended up in the middle of a pride event he kept bringing up how love is love. I guess subtle support is better than none. My mom still doesnt fully accept it. Over the years I found myself having emotions for guys, but never being able to express them, cause the physical attraction just wasnt there, and I believed it wasnt fair for either me or them to be in that type of relationship. The ones I attempted always tried to get me to be physical with them anyways. It took a lot of time researching the different types of attraction for me to understand who I truly am, and I still dont really discose it unless I am totally comfortable with somebody. Or just dont care how they feel about it.

Lesbian

Ive know I was apart of the LGBTQIA community from a very young age. Its been interesting trying to figure out who I am as a individual and how I identify. Growing up as a twin, had its own impacts which affected how I see myself in ways some people don’t understand. While coming to the realization that I was attracted to women, allowed me to have my own voice separate from my twin which was definitely something different. We were seen as one, like most twins are especially if they’re the same sex. But coming to the realization and coming out are two different situations. As well as realizing it and accept it. It was a struggle for me at first to accept it because no one asks to be “different” especially when people are hated for it in some places. My home situation was the best anyone could ask for but the people i grew up around weren’t the most open minded. In my case, I was petrified of what others would think rather than my family because I knew regardless my family would love me but would i still be the same person to the people who were my friends. The beliefs I had made me suppress the feelings for a while but then high school started. My high school experience gave me much anxiety during the first year because I had accepted it by then but i didn’t know if i was ready to be out. The first year of school forced me to be the best “straight” me, so i could connect with others, but not fully show the real me. At this time I was still suppressing a party of me regardless of what anyone said. Id get asked often if i was gay because i’m not the most feminine girl but i refused because the concept of talking about it was never there. My best friend at the time didnt even know and she would often try to get me to tell and it just didnt happen. I was genuinely terrified. Freshman year had just ended and I had been watching a lot of youtube videos on coming outs for inspiration. It had become so physically and mentally exhausting to be in the situation where i’m not being the full me, it felt like I was holding my breath most of the time. i wanted to be me but i couldn’t bring myself to do it so I told myself if my mom asked if i was gay i would just say yes and that would be that, but its not always so easy. My mom had asked multiple times between me maki the decision and me coming out because after a point it became obvious the I wanted to say something but nothing was coming out. Then fathers day came, we went to swim and I was sitting next to my mom in the pool just talking and then question came up. She asked me and I froze. I started to cry and shake my head. She was shocked that I had said yes after denying for so long but she was proud. She was the first person I had come out to, not even my twin sister. A couple minutes later I came out to my sister, then later that night my dad which was harder than I thought it was going to be. I had felt so much relief like a rock had been taken off my chest and it was the best thing i could ask for. They love and support me regardless and thats all I needed. In the next coming weeks I came out to my friends one by one. The deeper the relationship established I did it public while the once that were less intimate I did over text. Although I am out now, i still find it hard occasionally to come out to new people in my life. I don’t think it’ll completely go away but as of right now i’m comfortable with who i am enough to not let others make me feel invalided for who I love. In the fall, i’m starting college in tennessee on a full ride scholarship, and its going to be a ride coming out to my teammates and the other people I meet, but i’m ready for it. Essentially you’re coming out everyday to someone new and its just apart of being who I am and i fully accept that because Im proud of who I am and absolutely nothing will change that.

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire (she/her)

I never knew I was gay when I was growing up. I had a conservative family who never talked about love. I was extremely in denial and extremely obsessed with boys. But, I met a girl when I was 15, at school. And we became fast friends – we were exceptionally close. I thought all friendships were meant to feel like that – warm, safe… slightly obsessive. And then one day she wanted to kiss me, and I was so confused because I didn’t like GIRLS??? And it took me a long time to come around, but she became my first girlfriend and it was the biggest scariest secret I had to keep. We went to an all girls school and she was incredibly affectionate so it wasn’t long before people started talking about us behind our backs and suspecting. I got tonnes of anonymous messages online calling me slurs and asking if we were dating. Keep in mind it was 2012, things were very different than they could be now. So finally after months of rumours about us being “dirty lesbians” and snide comments in class I decided it was time for me to just say it, because I was tired of awful made up stories about me floating everywhere. So I made a post on Facebook telling everyone to stop – stop calling me a lesbian, stop making things up. And I told them that I was bisexual. I received over 300 likes on that post. And somehow, magically, all the hate whispered behind our backs slowed right down. Because nobody had anything to talk about anymore. Because I confirmed the truth, we weren’t hiding anymore. That relationship lasted 18 months and I’ve had many long term relationships with women since. My label has changed over time and I now feel that Queer most describes my sexuality but I also identify with pansexual and bisexual. But for me, my sexuality doesn’t feel like it is just one thing. I feel fluid, like I have the capacity to love anybody. My story has many, many more layers as do all of ours. This is just one short version of my story, and how I became a part of one of the most wonderful communities on earth.

Caroline H.

Looking back to my primary school years I can remember having feelings towards girls, and crushes on female celebrities at the time, I went through secondary school with a boy who later briefly got engaged too, still suppressing any thoughts of girls, I started my first job at 17 and instantly was attracted to another member of staff who was married, after many months we started having a physical relationship, this was our first same sex relationship and it was like someone had finally released me, we stayed together for 5 years having a secret relationship until she ended it, I was 32 by then, after the initial heart break I started living my life to the full and over the next 17 years embarked on 4 serious relationships, although by this time I was out to all my friends and colleagues, I still hadn’t come out to my family, this was a decision I had made as my parents were elderly and in poor health and I felt telling them would be fir my benefit and probably detrimental to them, so at the age of 49 my dear mother passed away and the following year I met someone and I posted a photo of us on social media to let everyone else know! Although we’re no longer together I credit her for giving the confidence to do it and love being a gay lady out and proud.