Community Rainbow Waves

Jessi, the gay woman

I was about 17 when I realised. I developed a crush on not 1 but on a group of 3 girls on the bus. 2 of them were sisters. I didn’t have a big coming out, not even with my parents, but I grew up in a place and around people that I knew wouldn’t have a problem with it. The first time I did actually tell my mom was right before I was going live on a radio show. My mom NEVER listened to the radio but that night of all nights she was. So I figured I would give her a little heads up I was going to be on the radio. So I ran into her bedroom and yelled “I’m going to be on the radio!” and then ran back out just to run back in and yell “to talk about my bisexuality!” I didn’t give her time to respond and she never actually did but I knew she was gonna be okay with it otherwise I wouldn’t have done that. Now we’re so many years later, changed a bit (or a lot) and I’ve come to the realisation I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a man and can only see myself in a serious relationship with a woman. The older I got, the less I was interested in men to not at all anymore. Which is also why I identify as gay, because I don’t want to give myself a specific label like lesbian or bisexual. I’m happy with being gay.

Jen

Well, I came out as a lesbian a few months ago, at 28. Looking back I can see how it was always there, but only recently I started being aware of it. I was always looking for signs, for something to happen to make me take that step. Like I would join a sport team, or wear flannel or convince my gay guy friend that we should go to a gay bar for him to meet guys. I guess I wanted someone to hold my hand and guide me across the “line”. But since this is real life and not a scripted b type movie, it never happened, and eventually I just kind of took a metaphorically deep breathe and jumped over myself. And now I’m here, still alone, but true to myself and my surrounding (who all took it very well.I live in a very open and liberal place so this was never a concern and I’m grateful for that) and finally I feel like I’m in the right direction to the life I’m meant live.
Thank you for this opportunity to share. I wish everyone happiness, joy, adventures and love- self love first and every other kind next.
Love,
Me

Barbara

I think I’ve always known that I am a lesbian. When I was 14 years old I already had my first girlfriend. I enthusiastically told this to my parents, who unfortunately looked at it with slightly different eyes than I did. My mother grew up in a very religious family, so my sexuality didn’t fit the picture. This caused a lot of insecurity for me, and I was bullied at school and this resulted in a period of anxiety attacks. Fortunately my parents now support me in everything. I have learned to accept myself for who I am and I AM surrounded by people who also accept me for who I am. Only when you love yourself and can be yourself can you love someone else and I have been happy with my beautiful girlfriend for 6 years now. So don’t be scared if you love another humanbeing. Just be and love yourself. You have so much to give.

Pansexual female

I came out as bisexual when I was 12 because my knowledge of things like pansexuality was really limited. It wasnt till I was 13 that I realized I was pan. I knew that I would be accepted by my family but I was still scared. Like, once I told everyone it would be a reality. I knew I liked girls when I would look more at girls in movies and I would desperately try to find a boy to tell my friends I liked. I fell in love with my best friend which is such a trope but moving on, it was watching TV shows that I really found my home (if that makes sense). It was watching shows like Glee, Wynonna Earp, and One Day at a Time that I found my confidence. I think the hardest part of it all was learning to accept myself and dealing with hiding a part of myself. Now I’m 15 though, I spend time working on ways to make other people feel accepted and safe. I think the main thing that is really helped me is seeing lgbtq+ people on TV and normalizing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transgender (FtM)

I havent come out yet, but i will. I found out i was trans around the summer of sixth grade beginning of seventh grade, after i thought i was just gay. I am currently in eighth grade, i know my coming out will be okay, but i know people wont like me for who i am and people who will leave because im trans, and im okay with it. My journey is just starting, and i will be the best me of all. – Ryan

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 🙂

Lesbian

I guess I have always been interested in girls, but I refused to acknowledge it. It was kind of obvious to some of my friends, who knew before I did. I guess that is why I never really tried to acknowledge it, but my friends would often comment about how different I was from them, just trying to make me realize it. I finally accepted the fact that I was a lesbian at the tail end of my seventh grade year. I refused to accept myself for who I am, but I still came out to one of my friends, who helped me come out to one of my friends who is an adult. She managed to help me accept myself, and come out to my parents, all in the same week.

It’s leviOsa not leviosA

I always had doubts about my sexuality and that terrified me, I finally confirmed it at 15, in my class there was a beautiful girl who literally captivated me, months passed in which I kept everything new in my being, until one day I had an attack of courage and I confessed, strangely she felt the same that day was the best and after exits we started a relationship, almost 3 months later my mom that blew up the bomb, they made me go to psychologists several times she could not accept having a daughter like that (Obviously my relationship ended my mom) I was so obsessed that I watched all my female friends, today 4 years have passed although she no longer controls me as before, she thinks it was a stage and that I already passed it, in truth you are an inspiration to I hope one day to have the courage to open my heart to my family and tell them that it was not a stage that is me …….. (sorry but I had to translate it maybe not very good .. atte: an admirer of Lat America)

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.