Community Rainbow Waves

Gayyyyyy/Lesbian 🙂

Hello! I’m a 17 year old girl and I’m gayyyyy but I’m
not out yet. But feel free to put this on the website! Ok into the
story. I first realized when a certain situation happened *ahem when I
was play fighting with one of my friends who was a girl and she kinda
got on top of me and just started to hold me down cuz we were sort of
wrestling. Anyways after that I freaked out and was like WHAT IS THIS
FEELING NONONO GO AWAY HORRIBLE FEELING. So I strictly was against being
attracted to girls in any fashion for a couple months and I grew up in a
homophobic Asian family where my parents would always say EW GROSS WHAT
IS THIS whenever they saw any LGBTQ+ representation on tv. And every
time my parents did that I would get a tight knot in my chest and I
would have the urge to cry. I realized that a life where I felt so
anxious around my parents, wasn’t a life that I wanted. So
eventually… I told my best friend that I was gay and I knew she would
be fine with it bc she was Bi and it was the best thing ever bc I felt a
weight being lifted off my shoulders. I am still in the process of
telling everyone around me but I’ve told my close friends and they all
were like “yeah we knew” haha. I’m still really scared of telling
my parents that I’m gay but I’ll get there soon enough 🙂 ps thank
you so much for an inspiration to me and representing the LGBTQ+
community in a way that they deserve

A girl who really likes girls and finds some guys attractive

I was in 6th grade when I first realized that I really like girls more than I should. I first told my childhood friend and she was okay with it then some of my other friends when I was in 7th and 8th then I told my brother and he was happy that I’m happy and he’s the only one in my family that knows and accepts me, I’m super scared of coming out to everyone else and I hope one day I’ll be happy. Thanks for letting me tell my story for now at least, I hope that one day everyone will find they’re happiness myself included.

Lili

A part of me always knew, since I was a child I had a class of attention for women, I always liked to be helpful with them, to take care of them, to be for them.
But I had never seen this kind of relationship until I was 13 – 14 years old, that’s when I realized that this society and my family would not receive me with open arms. And I struggled for years to stop being myself, it was a very difficult time, where I hated myself. I told myself that this was going to happen and that I wasn’t really a lesbian.
It was that time with that girl, that only by the touch of her hand with my hand I knew that this was not a stage that was totally wrong.
Then I met someone like me who lived her life freely, we became friends. I filled her with questions because I wanted to know why this had happened to me, was it normal? Why couldn’t I get the woman I liked out of my mind? Should I tell my parents?
I am grateful that she helped me to find myself and not wish for death, I know she went through her hell too.
And I also discovered that it was not just her and me but that a very large community was supporting and encouraging us to go and get these colors out.
Now I am proud of who I am, I have no doubt. I know it’s still hard for me, I have no support in my family. But that doesn’t stop me, if I have to walk alone, I will do it.
Thank you for this space, Dom, you also had a hand in finding out where I belong.

Lesbian

It took me years to finally accept who I was, and when I did I felt so alone. But when I couldn’t breathe anymore and I couldn’t control my emotions, I broke down and told my mom. She immediately told me she knew and loved me. My dad was so unphased and just said, that’s my girl. My best friend who was antigay told me he loved me and I changed his mind on gay people. All in all, my loved ones were happy for me and encouraged me to live my best life. Thanks Mom, Poppa, and Alex. I love you too, MJay

The age of love is short, there is no limit to oblivion… But this is the value of love.

Since childhood. But the awareness and acceptance of self came at a more conscious age. Now I am happy about it. I have been living with my beloved person for several years now and the most wonderful thing for her is that I was a discovery of her sexuality and an opportunity to realize that the world is not only black and white. I live in Russia, the country that patience and understanding of such I am not very different, here still slips the foundations of the past, and there is probably a disadvantage in this, but there are a lot of people like me who are gradually me attitude towards us)

Queer

I knew from a young age I was attracted to boys and girls. I actually had a Backstreet Boys poster and a Brittany Spears poster up in my bedroom and I thought both were cute. I was living in the Midwest at the time and that was a huge no no in the 90’s. Plus I had gotten teased a ton about my mom and stepdad practicing Tibetan Buddhism. I just went along with the other girls gushing about boys, guy celebrities, and such. I had crushes on boys and girls through school, but I felt I wasn’t gay. The only queer women I had been exposed to were very masculine and I didn’t identify in that way. I left home when I was 16 to move to California. I had met my fathers family for the first time and wanted to get to know them. I got involved in their religion, and while I saw the good, I saw so much of what didn’t align with my true self. I struggled for a few more years. I had a few friends come out to me and I was so happy for them. I knew at this point I was queer, I just couldn’t muster up the strength to come out myself.
I eventually moved to Orange County to reunite with my sister and my mom in 2014. I was 23. My mom always knew and kept trying to practically pull me out of the closet, fear had kept me in and so resistant. Eventually my anxiety for not being myself grew unbearable and I had to change that. So I came out at 23. My family was over the moon. Things started shifting for me. My dads family didn’t talk to me for a long time. Things have changed now, we communicate here and there. After my first serious relationship I have found myself in Massachusetts. While my partner and I went our separate ways for personal growth I find myself drawn to help others in situations like me. Be a light in dark times. That along with a spiritual awakening has held me steadfast my efforts and so inline with myself. I genuinely have love and compassion for others and I’m happy to be me. It’s also motivated me to become vegan and environmentally conscious.
So coming out started this beautiful chain reaction for me and I hope to support and encourage others to do the same.
You all are beautiful beings. Let your light shine bright, you are worth it and you never know when that light shines for others in the dark.

I hope my story hasn’t ended just yet.

Okay here it goes…I knew I was an LGBTQ2IA community member about 10 years ago when I stopped being in denial about my sexuality. It was exhausting coming up with excuses and thinking that I could fake love a guy if I found myself in a relationship with one. And I almost convinced myself into thinking that was an okay thing to do simply because I knew my mom wouldn’t approve of a gay daughter and most of all because it would make life easier. But something inside of me wouldn’t let go, I couldn’t imagine living happily with someone I didn’t truly or honestly could be in love with both emotionally and physically. I saw and still do to this day see how unhappy my mother is in her marriage and I cannot forcibly bring myself to live life similarly.

I did come out to one person, but she proved to not be trusting. I have not come out to my family. I know I won’t get a positive reaction from my mom. I love her to death, but she’s got this traditional way of seeing relationships that I simply don’t fit into and it hurts so much to know that she doesn’t have a problem letting someone go if they don’t retain similar interests with her. Sexuality is a big one and that has kept me in the closet. I cannot risk Losing shelter.

But life has been sad and maybe strange from an outsider’s perspective. I have so many years been my mom’s helping hand in everything from household duties ( cooking, cleaning, running errands, going to the market ) to renovation projects at home, and now in the past 8 years, at least, helping her with her with the same things, but now also helping her with her health, she’s been sick with some major illnesses and now she’s struggling physically – she is getting frail. I have literally never left her side which means I have never dated and never been in a relationship. I took online classes to acquire my higher education and it allowed me to help her while going to school too, but I never had the opportunity to explore my sexuality and to know what it feels like to intimate with someone.

God this feels so embarrassing because I don’t know if anyone can relate to my story.

It took a lot to say outloud to myself, one night lying in bed many years ago, that I am gay. It was so liberating to say because I could finally be honest to myself about my feelings. But I knew I couldn’t step out. Over the years it has eaten away at my mind so much, it is tiring and exhausting. I got into reading fanfiction last year and it has helped me cope a little with my situation. But I feel like I need something more. I recently turned 30 in March and I feel like time is running out. I want to know what it is like to love and to be loved. I hope it’s not selfish to think or feel this way when I have my mom that needs my help.

I recently have had the opportunity to apply for work at law enforcement agencies, police officer positions. I hope between all the stress here at home I will be able to get into the physical shape needed in order to get through the physical agility tests. I hope through this I can finally come out and not be fearful about it and hopefully find a girlfriend – a loving partner. I can only hope right?

I came across this website through a fanfiction writer’s tumblr. I learned about Dominique’s instagram which led me to her website. I have never shared my story with anyone, and doing so on this platform is nerve wracking, but in knowing that if one person can relate to my story it will make me feel a little better and it will mean the world to me that this one person can feel better too knowing their not alone.

Thank you for taking the time in reading my story and thank you Dominique for creating such a wonderful and genius website that allows for stories to be told. I was really moved by your coming out story and as a result it motivated me to share mine.

Not coming out on my own terms

I knew that I was different from the age of six. I grew up in a neighborhood that primarily had boys my age and I got to grow up with them and plays sports, get dirty and pretend to be Power Rangers (my best friend and I always fought over being the red ranger) and I absolutely loved playing with these guys. I never had a silly childhood crush. That is until a girl our age moved in across the street. I didn’t really have any female friends when I was younger but the ones I had were nice. There was something different about this girl though and I didn’t process what it was until I got older. But at the time my best friend had a huge crush on her and it made me really mad. To the point where I would start dressing like him and doing things the other boys did to flirt with a girl. Until my best friend called me out on it and said it wouldn’t work because I’m a girl and girls can’t like other girls. In my mind at the time, he was right.

I never had crushes in elementary school. I was never interested. By middle school, everybody I hung out with had a boyfriend or was into a boy. There wasn’t a single boy that I had a crush on then. It led me to making up a fake boyfriend who goes to a different school with photos of some kid I found on myspace (not my finest moment lol) It worked for a while and afterwards my friends kept telling me that there were some boys who had crushes on me so I decided to give it a shot and “date them.” It wouldn’t last longer than a week with any of them. They would try to hold my hand and kiss me and I was so not into it. I was extremely uncomfortable and would just end it.

Ahh, high school. I went to a school where I didn’t know anybody. It was a fresh start. I made brand new friends, most of which were female, and was lucky enough to find two girls that would become my best friends. One of the friends I made however was a guy and because I was in high school now and hadn’t really had a boyfriend and him being attractive, I went for it. I really liked talking to him and hanging out with him, but any physical interaction was so off-putting to me. And during this relationship I had brought to the forefront the thing that I had been suppressing the most. I didn’t like boys in that way. I liked girls. It was extremely confusing and I slipped into a really dark place that led me into doing some things that I am not proud of. But my friends being as supportive as they are actually helped me figure things out in my head which made me finally comfortable enough to try things out with girls and see how it went. I remember kissing a girl first the first time and it felt like somebody smacked me hard enough to have whiplash. I knew for certain that I was gay. Out of this came many flings and eventually a girlfriend. Only my closest friends knew and I eventually told my younger brother since he would be at my school as a freshman my senior year.

I was making plans on coming out to my parents. I really terrified, mostly to come out to my dad and stepmom because of their upbringing and religious views. I decided I was going to tell my mom first. That is until my dad read my personal notes between my gf and I. He told me I was no longer to have her over and that I couldn’t see her unless it was for something school related. He practically grounded me to the house for a while. I would sneak over to her house to hang out but my dad tracked my phone every time I went out and he called me screaming at me. I got so sick of it and drive to my moms house only to find him there already to talk about it. My mom had my back and my dad was pissed especially since she still let my gf come over to her house. I was so devastated, but mostly because I couldn’t come out when and the way I wanted to. Everything felt like a mess. As soon as I turned 18 that year I moved into my mom’s house permanently because I had to get away from my dad. I didn’t talk to him much for a while. I’m not sure what happened during that time away but he had a complete change of heart and is now totally accepting of it. I got very lucky in that regard.

Ever since my experience, I work very hard with other people who are faced with the challenges of coming out and reach out to be a supportive helping hand. It also amazes me at how much more positive representation we are getting from LGBTQIA+ media and art. I wish I could have had this kind of representation when I was growing up. The incredible work that people put into the LGBTQIA+ community, such as Dominique’s Start the Wave project, are paving the way to a more positive perspective both outside and inside the community itself. My parents, especially my mom, are now huge advocates and take the time to watch and read and research what the community and the representation is all about. I hope that one day everybody can come to this type of understanding, whether it is something they accept or not. Just the understanding itself can be the spark to getting another step closer to love and acceptance.

Gay

I knew I was attracted to girls as soon as I knew what attraction felt like, but every time the thought presented itself I promptly decided that it was a problem for future me to deal with.
Initially this was because me as an 11 year old didn’t care too much about much to have a serious think about things, but as time progressed and I learnt words like ‘lesbian’, and ‘bisexual’ on the playground and (slowly) through media the more I realised that what I was feeling was associated with those words.
Once it had a name, it was a thing and it had to be dealt with.
However the name my feeling had was given to it by my peers, who in our first year of high school (middle school for Americans I guess) would still lace those words with mistrust and hate.
Over my dead body would I be associated with something like that when I was just leaving my 11 year old book-nerd-with-a bad-haircut-self behind. So, I shoved those feelings right down and hoped they’d go away, and honestly boys aren’t THAT bad maybe I can have a nice life with a man or maybe I’ll just get one of those jobs where you’re too busy to get married?
Like our beautiful founder I was hoping it would all go away. This remains my coping method in most things to this day.
Anyway then came the years where i talked to the boys my friends said I should on Snapchat and then avoided them at ALL COSTS in school, and I started to really admire women that I’d see on tv or even my friends…. completely obliviously.
I was on the field hockey team for Christ’s sake.
In high school I was quite popular, in that I hung out with the cool kids and people knew my name. I had friends in other high schools so I went to lots of parties and my big sister could buy me alcohol so I had street cred. The field hockey team was where all the cool girls gathered and we’d always joke about how none of us were lesbians despite the trope (lol).
This was a precarious situation. I was a people-pleaser and probably always will be. I would say anything to be liked and stay in a comfortable second row of that pyramid ( I was still living under the shadow of that haircut).
I told myself that I didn’t care anyway so it didn’t hurt to keep it secret.
I also had a best friend whom I was madly in love with. Standard.
When that friendship ended it was as a result of my feelings and my unfair expectations of her and it meant I had to confront them finally.
I was scared because the the people that I loved and counted on were casually homophobic about gay people that we knew. They would say it was their hair or humour they didn’t like but in reality it was that they were different. We were young and stupid and mean and I was terrified of being rejected by them. I was terrified of not being invited to sleepovers, or girls not changing next to me before PE.
All these years I’d been rejecting my own feeling I’d turned them into something ugly in my head. I like dressing in a typically ‘femme’ way. But like not all the time that’s so much effort??? But if I looked in the mirror and felt my hair wasn’t long enough or I didn’t have enough makeup on or felt like I’d gained weight, I thought everyone would know I was gay. As adolescents we’d moved on past ‘gay’ being an insult. Now you had to be afraid of ‘butch’ and ‘dyke’.
I decided that the only possible way to come out and not be rejected was to be as conventionally attractive as possible, died my hair blonde, wore more makeup, shorter dresses, higher heels. All of these were fun in moderation. I lost a lot of weight very quickly and not very safely.
I do whatever it took to fit in because I thought it would make people question me less if I came out. I started to drink a lot and one night in with my three closest friends, I got blackout drunk and when I woke up I’d come out to them.
One way to do it.
Anyway they were so brilliant and it turned out that I just needed to spit it out.
Not just that obviously, I needed to become comfortable with my own body, my sexuality, my emotions and bloody hell I needed some healthy coping mechanisms.
At the ripe old age of 18 I’m not as comfortable as I’d like to be but it’s a journey and I’m on my way.
I started looking for positive representation and that’s when I found Wynonna Earp and wayhaught and Dominique Provost Chalkley who is just too beautifully brave . I also found this beautiful community she created and within it I could not be prouder to be a lesbian woman who is beautiful however I dress, and who is always trying to be kinder and spread more love because of this amazing woman who was brave enough to share her story.
Tonight I’m coming out to my parents and I’m gonna tell them about this gorgeous girl I’ve been seeing, big hugs to everyone telling their stories xx

The Battle Lesbian AKA That Willa Cosplayer with the Demon Puppet

Looking back, it should’ve been obvious to me that I was gay since preschool. I had so many little kid crushes but because I had never learned that gay even existed it never even dawned on me that that’s what I was feeling. I just assumed I didn’t get crushes like my friends did. By 6th grade I’d come to the conclusion that I just wasn’t built to feel romantic feelings or attraction of any kind. Then in 7th grade I had a best friend and we were really close. I remember so clearly, after school one day not long after I turned 13, we were working on something on the floor in my bedroom. We were laughing about something and she leaned in to whisper in my ear. In that moment I felt what was like an overwhelming wave of emotion and the thought that immediately popped into my head was that I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t- but in that moment it finally all clicked on my head that it wasn’t that I “wasn’t built to feel attraction or have a sexuality”, I just didn’t feel that way towards -boys-. I wouldn’t come out until 2 years later. Not because I thought my family would react poorly, just that I am a very private person and I did and still do feel extremely vulnerable talking about intimate feelings. When I’m really anxious I can go mute, so I decided to come out I would write “I’m gay” on a notecard and show it to my mom. I did when we were out on a weekly mother-daughter trip. And I’ve been out and proud ever since.