Community Rainbow Waves

Gay

I grew up in a very traditional filipino family. My parents had me 6 months after they were married at 18. I grew up with boys in the family. Being the only the child, I grew close to my male cousins who were around the same age as me. I believe that I knew I was gay since I was little because I was such a tomboy and I would find other females attractive. It got to the point where I made myself believe that I wasn’t gay and that I’m attracted to these beautiful women because I want to be like them but deep inside I knew that I was attracted to them because I liked them. So growing up for me was tough because knowing that I was gay then made it impossible for me to really be myself. I was born in 1996 so when it was around my Junior high/High School Era, I was struggling with my sexuality. I still chose to deny that I wasn’t a lesbian or bi, or gay. It wasn’t until the end of grade 9 when I met someone. She was one of the reasons why I chose to go to. certain High School because I genuinely wanted to get to know her. Soon enough we went to the same high school and we became best of friends. I knew deep down inside that I had a crush on her and that I really really liked her. She was dating a boy throughout all of high school and I chose to be strong and be her best friend because I’d rather have her as a friend than nothing at all. That’s when some people started to question my sexuality more. I played a lot of sports in high school so I dressed like a jock almost everyday. Oh and to be clear, I find men attractive too. The first boy I kissed was in gr10. I dated 2 guys in a span of those 3 years in high school but deep down I knew it was always her. I guess you can say that I was trying to cover my feelings for her by being with someone else (mainly a guy). Anyways, long story short. after our first 3 years of College, I realized that my feelings for her got stronger and stronger to the point where I wasn’t sure if I could be friends with her anymore because it hurt me alot seeing her dating someone else. One night we went to celebrate finishing exams for that semester. She got drunk, I wasn’t drinking. She took me to the bathroom stall at the bar and cried and asked me why I have been so distant. So then after 6 years of hiding my feelings I told her that I was in love with her. 1 month later, we got together. Then at that moment I felt like I was invincible and that I was strong enough to come out to my friends and family. And so I did and so did she. We came out together and it was a scary but a beautiful moment for us. However, my parents did not take it well. Considering that I am the only child and in a traditional filipino family, it was a tough time for my parents and myself. But without my support system (my friends and my GF at the time) I wouldn’t have had the guts to come out to my parents. In conclusion, we broke up, and its about a year and a half since we broke up, even though I am still madly in love with her and she’s moved on, I have found some light to get me through. I am embracing my sexuality more than ever. But to this day, I am still afraid to come out to certain people because I guess I am still scared of how they will treat or look at me after. I am just glad that I am out to my parents and my friends because they mean the most to me. I apologize for this long story. There are tons more of details but I didn’t want to bore anyone any longer. But here I am, out. Gay as I would like to identify myself. I love men and women all the same, but I would say that I am attracted more to women as I am able to find deeper emotional connections with them.

I am a lesbian.

I knew I was part of the community when I was young and I just never really knew what “gay” felt like so then I got older(16 now) I finally got the courage to tell my parents, but first I told my friend by passing a note, then she said she was bi too and then I came out to my mom but couldn’t tell my dad because I feel like he had a whole other perspective on it, but my mom secretly told my dad and he is cool with it. I told my sister and she is very supportive of it and we have a closer bond together and we always joke around and pick out my “future girlfriend.” My whole family is supportive of me, including my grandma, and doesn’t think any different of me and I can’t wait for what the future holds for me!

Lesbian

I guess I’ve always known, I’ve always hung out with the dudes, never really had a crush on them or anything. That was until junior high. I knew I needed to date somebody, but who? Well, that was the part I didn’t know. Those 3 years I dated some boys, but never felt a real connection. I associated that with being young and not knowing what love was about.
My freshman year in high school, I met this girl I instantly fell in love with her. We clicked, and soon we were a thing.
But then the rumors started. Nasty, mean things were being said about me, and as I knew they were true, I too just wanted to fit in. To be normal, to not be the person others looked at. So I pushed my sexuality out of the way and pretended it was “just a phase”.
However, my sophomore year in high school I met this girl during the summer. She was beautiful, stunning even, and I knew then it wasn’t just a phase.
Soon however, word got around to my parents. And things weren’t so accepting. I was kicked out of my house for 3 months, luckily I had two very supporting sisters who took me in.
In the middle of my sophomore year is when things changed. I decided I wasn’t going to let the ideas or beliefs of other people affect who I was. So I officially came out as a lesbian woman. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t care what others thought. I had no fear of the harsh things they would say, because in the end the only thing that matters is me.
After weeks of reconnecting and talking, my parents finally invited me back to live with them. We had a sit down conversation, with tears and yelling, but in the end I think my parents finally realized that I’m still their daughter, and nothing is going to change that.
Now, I’m 18, and things are awesome for me. I have a girlfriend who I love, a family who loves me and supports me for who I am, and friends who will always have my back.
It wasn’t easy, it never will be. But the thing that I will always remember, is that at the end of the day. I am me. Words don’t matter, what other people believe don’t matter, in the end it is me, my life, and who I am. And I am me.

19, lesbian, and on my journey of becoming proud

During my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I realized that I wasn’t straight. I started having feelings for girls that I had never experienced before, but there was always a part of me that tried to suppress them so I wouldn’t disappoint anyone. I had been struggling for a while, I was scared to open up to my friends, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I had felt this way until one day my best friend came out to me as pansexual. It made me feel better knowing that I had someone who would accept me and show me support no matter what. A couple months passed and I finally found the courage to talk to her about my path to discovering a major part of me. I ended up coming out as bisexual to my friends, and I started dating a boy during my junior year.Throughout that relationship I tried really hard to make myself feel like I liked him. Turns out, there really wasn’t anything there for either of us so we broke up. It was hard for me because I wanted something with a boy to work so badly but it never did.

A few months passed, and I was nearing the end of my junior year when I became friends with a girl who I had only seen a couple of times on the bus. I sat down at her lunch table because all my friends were out doing their senior ditch day. We talked more and hung out a couple of times and then I realized that I had a crush on her. I had feelings for her that were way different than anything I had ever felt for a boy. At this point though, I still tried telling myself that I liked boys and I ended up going to junior prom with my ex. Summer came along and I talked to the girl I had a crush on more and I finally figured out that I made a connection with her that I was never able to have with boys. So, I started questioning my sexuality again. Then during my senior year I became friends with the people who she hung out with, which were also apart of the lgbtqia+ community. I finally had the support I needed to figure out my sexuality, because my parents never really gave me their full support and always told me things that you don’t want to hear. After I started college and finished my first semester, I finally found the courage to tell my parents that I was gay. From that point until now, I have been slowly but surely becoming more and more proud of who I am, and it’s because of the people I’ve surrounded myself with, and all the people who are willing to portray characters and show the world the lgbtqia+ community.

I look up to each and everyone of you beautiful people for sharing your experiences and allowing me to see that our community is filled with very extraordinary individuals. <3

Free

I knew I was “different” in the early years of high school, 14 years old, and I denied it… hard. I had seen and heard how people in my family, in my community and in my friends group reacted to any sway on the sexuality spectrum, and so I hid it. For so many years, from every single person, to the point where I had hidden it from myself again, any thoughts or feelings for someone of the opposite sex and I would chalk it up to envy or just admiration and leave it at that, even though I knew I was actively lying to myself. When I was 18 a close friend of mine came out while we were still in high school And she faced some relentless bullying because of it, despite having friends and others who supported her, And that made me decide that I would wait until I graduated, which turned into I’ll wait until I’m not living with my parents which turned into I’ll wait until I move out of this very closed minded town.
I came out to that very same friend 2 years later because I was having some incredible inner turmoil over all of it, of what it would mean to be myself. To allow myself to breathe and live my life without lying or hiding.
And from then on I found it harder to hide my true self, and even harder to want to hide. I had been hiding for so long that once I started to accept that part of myself, there was no holding back.

I moved to the other side of the country, I had many reasons for that decision, but ultimately it was for my mental health, I had been through a lot of traumatic experiences and after four years of treatment for my depression and anxiety I felt the only way I could make progress and be able to live was to leave the town and people who had contributed to my state.
And when I moved I came out officially and publicly at 22 years old. I know there are people from my home town who no longer acknowledge my existence, that didn’t welcome me home as the same girl they loved when I left, but that is not mine to carry, I am being honest, and living my life which has seen me heal and grow into the best version of me.

By acknowledging who I am, I was able to acknowledge the pretty crappy things I had put up with because I had been convinced, by my own mind and by others that I didn’t deserve to be happy because I loved differently,
Since coming out, I have been in the healthiest relationship that I’ve ever been in, she helps me heal, and grow and strive for better everyday, and being in a healthy relationship is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, being open and vulnerable and trusting after years of closing myself off from pain or fear or my past is the scariest thing but it has been the most rewarding.

Lesbian and human

I knew I was different, in elementary school, but I didn’t know why. As I got older, I started learning about things that were never spoken about in the Mexican culture. I learned about sex through classmates when I was in elementary school. When I came home, I told my mom some of my peers told me about sex. My Mom immediately got upset, she told me they shouldn’t have revealed to me what that was, and told me to never speak to my school mates again.
As I grew older and entered middle school, I was looking for music on a computer. I found a folder that had a name thinking it was a music file and well it wasn’t a music file. As you can imagine, that was a bit of a shock. I shamefully closed the window as quickly as I could. However, curiosity got the best of me and I opened it again, several times. Finally, embarrassed and fearing being found out, I closed everything on the computer. These feelings that I stumbled upon, continued to grow throughout my formative middle school years. I began to realize how much more I noticed girls and not boys.
When I started high school, I knew that I liked women but I dated boys, because I was scared to come out to my parents. I did what I thought I should have done. I lost my virginity to a guy sometime in high school, although I didn’t feel any emotional connection. I did eventually find a great group of friends and we would remain close throughout the rest of high school. I had crushes on two of the girls in my friend group and I was still afraid to come out. The one crush was particularly devastating, as she was taken by my other male best friend. He wasn’t upset but it was still scary to come out because I wasn’t sure what the reception would be. I didn’t want to lose my friends. Not only that I was still questioning myself. I eventually lost touch with my high school friends unfortunately.
I did eventually come out to my parents near the end of high school. I told them after coming back home from a church retreat. I came out and told them I was bi ( I still wasn’t sure of myself at the time) my mom proceeded to call her church friends so they could pray the gay away from me. I complied with my mom’s wishes. I kneeled down and pretended to repent while crossing my fingers behind my back. My mother at one point screamed at god asking why she had been punished by having a gay child. After this we didn’t talk for a while.
Around the same time, I came out to my brother on the same day that he was going to give me a guitar as a christmas gift. I cried and I told him about my situation with Mom and Dad as well as my fear of losing people. He embraced me with the warmest hug and told me that I shouldn’t care what others think or worry about the religious factor. He told me he loves me no matter what. I was relieved and happy.
I was much more nervous to tell my sister, oddly enough she already knew. And we also never spoke about it again.
With Phoenix job corps came many new experiences and new crushes. I felt like I could finally be myself. I came to grips with the realization I am a lesbian and not bisexual. And today I finally find the courage to come out to you all as a Mexican American lesbian and I am authentically proud to be me.

Bisexual

Accepting me was a very tough process. Living in a closed-minded country, with homophobic parents and in a school that I knew did not support the community made me question myself many times, it made me live in an environment where I believed that my feelings were not valid. It was thanks to the performances on tv shows and being part of the lgbtq + community on twitter that made me realize that my feelings are valid and normal. I have not yet had the courage to come out with my family because I know it will be difficult, I have tried to see their reactions but we have always ended in discussions and at this moment I depend economically on them for my studies so I have not been able to do it. I met amazing people on twitter who are from my country (Peru) and who have helped and inspired me a lot in my journey and I hope that later I can come out into the world to say how proud I am to be who I am.

Better late than never!

I always felt like I didn’t fit in with the girls I went to school with. I grew up in a hard-believing traditional Christian household, and one didn’t talk about things of sexuality that didn’t fit in that vein. So purity culture was huge, and total abstinence was expected no matter who you loved outside marriage. So I pushed it down and tried to ignore it. I was attracted to different genders and I felt wrong trying to be with people I was attracted to and had to deal with the guilt of that attraction as well as the worry of violating purity culture in general. I guess subconsciously I decided that since I could be with who I wanted, I would not be with anyone.(I know- it sounds wrong to me now too!)
Fast forward literally decades to 2020- I was terrified of coming out to my family, in particular to my Mom, who was the strongest Christian influence in the family. She passed unexpectedly in 2020, and in my processing grief, I decided it was way past time for me to live my truth. I had denied myself my true being too long. I decided that I was tired of living a lie and had moved away from the many of the strict “traditional” Christian beliefs of my childhood and started looking for myself. It was time to come out. I spent weeks thinking & worrying about it, and one day, the timing made itself right- I came out as queer.
My Family’s response: “We just assumed you were.”

I couldn’t believe that I spent so many, many years living outside my genuine self and my family wasn’t really an obstacle (some other, distant relatives are not on board, but I’ve never interacted much with them) as much as I had made them to be in my head. I know this isn’t likely a common experience and I am so proud of my family and the support they’ve given since, and the work we have put in to build communication on a new domain.

I am learning and growing, since I feel like a sort of oddity being a middle-aged “baby gay”, but I’m wading into a life that I have long denied myself. I’m thrilled, I’m scared, I happy, I’m nervous, I’m certain, but mostly, I’m free and I’m out!

Christine

When it comes to coming out, there is no such thing as “too late.”

For me, the time came during my sophomore year of college (only two years ago, though it feels like a distant lifetime ago now). Up to that point, I’d scarcely given a thought to my sexuality, let alone my gender. Sure, I’d had friends who’d come out as bisexual and/or nonbinary, I’d had 3 a.m. conversations with these friends about gender and related topics, and I supported those friends and tried to learn about the LGBTQ+ community as best I could, but as far as I knew, I was a cisgender heterosexual guy, and that was that.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Coming out, for me, took breaking away from so many of society’s expectations and perceptions of transgender people especially.

In the early months of 2018, the questions started to gnaw away at me, lurking in the back of my mind, ever-present even as I was just trying my best to make it through the rest of the school year in one piece.

Slowly, the questions shifted from “is it possible that I might be a girl?” to “is it okay for me to be a girl?” to “how much do I stand to lose from living my life as a girl?”

As if that struggle weren’t enough, I had to contend with one extra train of thought that complicated matters that much more: “I’m probably a trans girl… but I still like girls.”

There are so many stigmas that society places on transgender people, and what society had taught me was that if you were a trans woman, you had to have figured it out when you were young, you had to be into men, and you had to be as stereotypically girly as possible.

And so I held back. I suppressed as much as I could and tried to go on with my everyday life… until, finally, I couldn’t. The end of sophomore year came, and with nothing else to preoccupy me, the questions drifted back to the front of my mind, and I had no choice but to face them head on.

So, as many of us tend to do in this day and age, I took to the internet looking for answers. Slowly, I started to learn that everything I knew was wrong, and those answers I found smashed through the mental barriers that had held me back.

YES, you can be a trans woman and a lesbian. YES, you don’t have to figure out these things so soon in life. YES, you don’t have to adhere to society’s expectations. YES, you are valid.

By the end of May, I’d come to terms with my transness, though the goals I set for myself changed rapidly. At first, I’d thought I would hold back on coming out and transitioning until later in life… before long, that changed to “within a few years,” which soon gave way to “I’ll come out after I graduate.”

Eventually, I realized time was of the essence, and the last thing I wanted was to look back into my past years down the line and see nothing but regret. Living my life as my true self was the only way forward.

And so I started to make plans. I was going to come out by the end of that summer, and nothing was going to stop me.

I planned my coming out meticulously, because I worried endlessly that my parents, my family, wouldn’t accept me for who I am, that they would try to hold on to their perception of me as their 19-year-old son. I needed to be prepared, and so I took drastic measures. I wrote letters, and I made plans to leave them at home one day and then drive away for a few days to give my family time to take it all in, because I was so scared they would take out their emotions on me.

I remember leaving the letters and a poem explaining all the feelings I’d dealt with over the past months one afternoon in early August, and I remember how long that 90-minute drive to the next state over to stay with a friend felt.

It. Was. Terrifying.

My family’s panicked reactions that first night only made me more scared. I remember the frantic yelling over the phone, I remember the shock my family felt, and above all, I remember the fear I felt, with very few things to take my mind off of it. There was a part of me that worried I would never be able to go home again.

But to my relief, things got better. Within a few days, my family came around. I was able to go back home to a family that resolved that no matter what, they would learn, love me and support me (even if there were things they didn’t quite understand — I still remember the confusion in my dad’s face as he realized I was now a girl who liked girls, which, yes, made me a lesbian), and in the year and a half since my coming out, that hasn’t changed.

I’ve had the chance to well and truly find myself, and I am unabashedly proud to be who I am today. I finally feel like the woman I’m meant to be, and I am so much happier for it.

The road to finding yourself can be a long one, and oftentimes, it can be fraught with struggles, both internal and external. But as I look back at who I used to be and think of how much things have changed for the better in my life since then, I firmly believe traveling down that path has been worth it, and I hope that so many more people will get the chance to take that journey in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.

Lesbian/Gay

I’m older than a lot of you but still thought I’d share. When I was in 3rd grade I had a crush on my best friend a girl and also a boy in my class. Well I soon figured out I just liked him as a friend. Then 4th grade we had this gorgeous student helper. I continued to have these feelings as I grew but I hid them throughout high school. I came from a very religious family and you couldn’t do anything worse than being homosexual. It was right up there with murder….! So I dated boys and even married but it only lasted a year we had plenty of issues. It was only after I was divorced at the age of 21 that I met this incredible woman and she was everything that I’d ever I wanted. I allowed myself to feel the things I had hidden deep down and I was flooded with something I’d never known….happiness! We have been married for 5 years now and I’m so happy I was finally able to be me. So coming out is a process that I still do after all these years. My family found me disgusting for many years. They slowly let me back into their life’s. When I work with someone new the question always comes up, so are you married and do you have kids? I tell them the truth which I feel is coming out again and again. At least it’s easier now and most don’t say anything even if they are against it.