Community Rainbow Waves

I identify myself as female

I think around the age of 8 or 9 when the girls of my classroom started liking the boys and talk about them I had the thought that the boys were so childish and stupid and still girls liked them. After that when I knew that existed gay and queer people I already accepted them even though I never had think about it. Some years later I was talking to my best friend and I said that I really liked girls and apparently some guys but I didn’t know exactly what I was and she accepted me and open up about herself too. I still don’t have a defined sexuality and that’s ok since I know what I like.

My Name Is Gabi

I knew I was part of the lqbtq community when I was in fifth grade I Started to catch feelings for my girl best friend. People always Asked me “Gabi are u Bisexual” My anwser was always no I felt like no one would support a couple of months later I decided to come out to friends yes I lost some friends but it’s better to be ur self than I thought I have a huge community that supports me my friends support and love me that why I appreciate Them Soo much.

Sheelagh

I’m sorry my story is pretty long. Please feel free to edit as you will. I sent the wrong one yesterday. If you’re going to upload this please use this instead. Thanks!

Title: Yes I am, Undo Me and Ghost

My name is Sheelagh. I was born and raised in the Philippines. I grew up Christian with a mixture of Catholicism. My family is well-known in the Filipino-Chinese community. Both sides of the family are well-to-do. My grandparents built a Evangelical church next door because of his faith. Among my family’s businesses, we distributed Christian music in the Philippines. My Christian upbringing was certainly a very important part of my life.

My story begins in Kindergarten. This was the first time I felt the feeling of “being different.” I had a crush on my teacher. The older I got, I would always notice the girls in my class. However, I did not understand any of this. I didn’t know if there was a word to describe who or what I am.

When I was 5th grade, I remember being in a car with my entire family. My older sister asked my parents the pivotal question that kept me in the closet for the longest time. She asked: “What is something your children would do that you would not be able to forgive us for?” After a long pregnant pause, my mom replied, “If I found out one of my four children is gay/homosexual.” I went to the dictionary and found out what the word homosexual meant. Okay, now I had a word to describe who I and what I am. If I come out, my parents will never forgive me for it. I remember thinking to myself, “that’s great. I will just keep this information to myself.”

In 7th grade, I walked into a music store and asked the salesperson if she had any recommendations for me. I wanted something new, alternative and different. She introduced me to Melissa Etheridge. Something in the lyrics of her songs spoke to my soul. I was able to come out to myself and say “Yes, I am a lesbian. Yes, I am a homosexual. Yes, this is who I am.” For years, I went to sleep listening to all her albums at night.

When I was a Sophomore in high school, a friend came out to me. I stopped talking to her after that conversation. I stopped hanging out with her. She eventually left school and went to the US to finish high school. I still feel bad about this. I hurt her because I was not ready to face that part of myself.

My parents were very strict. We were not allowed sleep-overs. We were not allowed to go to parties until we were 18.

By college, I became active with Campus Crusade for Christ. I was at church almost every day of the week. I attended a prayer group on Tuesday. I joined a Bible study on Wednesday. I attended youth group on Friday and Saturday. And I was in church on Sunday.

In 2004, I watched the movie, “Saving Face” starring Joan Chen, Lynn Chen and Michelle Krusiec. For the first time, I saw myself on screen. It was my first exposure to positive lesbian representation on film. I wish I had the courage to say the words, “妈妈，我爱你. 我也是gay.” In English, mama, I love you. I am also gay.” But I didn’t. I was too scared to have that conversation with my family or with anybody. I came out by not coming home one night. I totally regret not having
that conversation but I just didn’t know what to say or where to begin.

Things began to not go well for me after what I did.

My family got me connected with an ex-gay ministry affiliated with Exodus International. I was not allowed to go anywhere by myself. I was driven to Bible study with this group every week. My family started a Bible study at my home. When my family realized that Bible study and family discussions were going nowhere, my mom gave me an ultimatum – change now or leave the house. I was also told that if I left, I would be cut off from the family and disowned.

I chose to leave with my girlfriend at the time. My family hired a private detective and tracked me down. My parents said they wanted to talk to me. When I came to see talk to them at a hotel room, I felt trapped. I felt I was being interrogated and coerced to go the US and think about my actions. This went on for hours until I broke down and said yes. Within less than a week, I was on a plane to Florida. My parents made arrangements that I was going to stay with family there.

After 6 months, my relatives realized that after numerous discussions, things were going nowhere. I was given another ultimatum – change now or go back home. In my mind, I pictured my family was either going to lock me up/throw away the key or I was going to be forced to marry a guy.

Neither scenario was acceptable to me. I thought about what I was going to do. I realized that for me to stay in the US, I needed to give my parents an acceptable proposition. I went online and found that Exodus International had a live-in ministry/program in Wichita, KS. I figured since they want me to consider changing who I am, I think they should pay for my expenses.

I found myself in Wichita. I got accepted into the ministry. I regret my participation (about 5 years) with this organization. The people running the ministry may have good intentions. Perhaps they were concerned about the well-being of my soul. However, there was no social worker on staff or anyone with religious training in their background. I was not allowed to interact with anyone outside the ministry and the church. I was not allowed to listen to music that was not pre-approved. I was not allowed to watch any television that was not pre-approved. For about half a decade, I was asked to not question their authority and just receive their message.

It totally went against everything that I believed in. I always questioned things. This really threw me off for a loop. I feel like I am still suffering from the mind games of being in this program. I went from being comfortable in my own skin to having a complex about who I am.

My only saving grace during this time was Jennifer Knapp’s music. I discovered her music while I was in the program. Her lyrics are so honest and moved me to remain open to God. The song “Undo Me” is my favorite from her album.

Undo Me became my prayer for many years. I went from being comfortable in own skin and not having any issues with my sexuality to praying that God take this away from me. I know the only way to please my family is for God to change me. There is no way I can do it on my own.

Luckily, because my family distributed Christian music in the Philippines, I was able to get all her albums sent to me. Her music gave me life while in that program. Without it, I do not know if I would have survived those years.

When I finally left the program, I was angry at God. I became promiscuous. I stopped caring about my faith. I went on downward spiral for a few years. I put myself in situations that were not healthy or positive. Fortunately, nothing bad happened to me.

Two years prior to meeting my wife, I realized this was not the life I wanted for myself. I stopped going to bars. I stopped having casual sex. I made a promise to myself. I will only consider sharing an intimate moment with somebody who I can see myself being in a serious relationship with.
Luckily, a wonderful and beautiful woman came into my life. She is now my wifey. We have two pugs, a son and a great life together. I have never been happier.

When Adaline decided to help others who have suffered religious trauma, I was excited. I am on this very journey. I need help in this area.

However, religious trauma is painful. I have not opened the Bible since leaving the ex-gay ministry. However, amazing human beings out there like Adaline and Jennifer Knapp are giving me hope. Who knew that Wynonna Earp and the community of Earpers will grow into something beyond the show and the fandom?

I am completely estranged from my family. They think the only way I can be acceptable and welcomed into the family is if I marry a guy or stay single/embrace celibacy for the rest of my life. It hurts when we talk because they always ask me how I am doing as if I am unmarried. When I share information about my life they act like I didn’t say anything.

Being part of this community has been a great source of hope and healing for me. I feel so blessed and honored to have read all your stories. Thank you for sharing because you make me feel like I am not alone.

I don’t identify, I’m just me.

I’ve always known I was part of the community, I’ve always thought other girls were pretty and that eventually I’d fall for one and that’d be it. What was shocking to me was that it wasn’t common to feel this way. At a very young age I’d thought, “But girls are so pretty! How can you not like girls?” I never felt a need to come out, I came home one day and said “Mom, I have a girlfriend!” I could tell she was surprised but she was calm and hugged me and told me how proud of me she was. Our community can be such an accepting place, that’s one of my favourite things about it. I’m still very young, I don’t exactly have very many years on me, but I’ve always known who I am and what I want.

I’m a bleeding heart snowflake, a sinning homosexual, and beautifully in love with another woman.

I don’t think there was ever a specific moment that made me realize I was gay. I’ve always known, whether it came to my childhood crush on Mulan, my adolescent obsession with Kristen Stewart, or my teenage love for my best friend. I came out to my friends my freshman year of high school, my mother about one year later, and am yet to come out to my father several more years later. He’s in his mid sixties and dead set in his ways, though I suspect he knows. Being gay is something that hides in the shadows if it isn’t directly addressed when you’re growing up. You can have your parents never speak out against the LGBT+ community, and still feel as if you’re living a lie. I’ve been called snowflake, baby, sweetheart, sinner, and many more by people who know no more about me other than the way I held the hand of the girl I loved. The world is changing, and we can hope it changes for the better, but hope means nothing without action. I live my life fighting in public for the rights of people like me, marching the streets, signing petitions, and I in fear at family dinners, too scared to introduce my own father into the world I’m a part of. The world is changing, and we’d better hope that we can keep up with it.

Anonymous

i was standing in line at an Amanda Palmer concert, and a female presenting person in front of me made me go: oh. girl-types are pretty too. i havent looked back except to realize how much this reveals about my adolescent interactions with certain girls that i didn’t recognize because they were different than my crushes on boys.

Bisexual

Growing up I was taught “God didn’t make us to be gay”, but now I’m an atheist so I say fuck the rules.

When I turned 14 I was met with the biggest challenge in my adolescent life ‘love’, I was told from a very young age that I will one day have my first crush and my first kiss with a boy I really like, but instead that ‘boy’ was changed into Rachel Lewis, a girl in my grade who stole my pens and my heart, she helped me accept a part of me I never thought I would and that was the fact that I was queer.

Rachel was a pretty toxic person to have a crush on, she played with my head, was super bipolar and ignored me for no reason other than the fact that she was bored. But even though she was a condescending bitch, a really pretty condescending bitch might I add, when we were talking about how we were in love with our English teacher every bad thing she had done just disappeared.

When I was 14, I assumed I was a lesbian, because of my lack of interest in boys at the time and my love for Katie McGrath, but then I later realized that……

I’m Bisexual

I think the reason I was so quick to diagnose myself with ‘lesbian’ was because of the lack of representation and understanding I had of bisexuals. I hear people talk about internalized homophobia, but this was internalized biphobia.

When I hit the ripe age of 16, I experienced for the first time, Homophobia and from my own mother, she had found out I was Bi by going through my messages, I was yelled at, hit, had my hair grabbed and dragged across the floor, I felt completely helpless.

But then I woke up

My body was in pain and my head hurt and at that moment I felt truly alone. My mother moved me to Australia with my Aunt forcing me to leave behind my friends, my sisters and Rachel Lewis.

This was a year ago and I still have the scar of that beating I got physically and mentally, I love my mum and am still in contact with her, I call her constantly and miss her a lot.

The part of her that doesn’t hate me deep down for being bi

I’m still in the closet with everyone. I haven’t had a girlfriend or boyfriend, yet which is depressing but writing this gives me a false sense of freedom I can only get from coming out, so I’ll say this once

If its love, fuck the rules

I’m Bisexual and proud

Bisexual

To be honest, I think that in my entire life I’ve been attracted to boys and girls but I didn’t knew that was a thing, I even thought that was normal. While growing up I was forcing myself to only like boys because “that’s what normal girls do” but for me it didn’t feel right. In 2018 I started to like a girl in my class, I didn’t want to but I couldn’t help it, then I confessed myself to her and she didn’t feel the same but she was supporting me. Then I came out in social media and that’s how my mom found out that I was bisexual. She was mad at me, she thought that I was confused but in reality I’m not because I really like girls and boys and that’s who I am. Now in 2020 my mom still thinks I’m confused but my friends accept me as a bisexual girl. And that’s my story. I am OUT.

“I am not confused and therefore a bisexual…I am just a confused bisexual” Alina, Germany

Looking back on my childhood I now ask myself “how did I not realise it sooner”. I am a 16 year old cis white girl from Berlin, Germany. Troughout my childhood I always wanted to “be friends” with sertain girls becuase I thought that they were pretty and kind. I had a huge crush on Emma Watson because “she was so cool”. My “bisexual awakening” was popably in 4th grade while watching “Pirates of the Caribbean” I had a crush on both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.
I was always a little wilder and “boyish” in my behaviour although I wore dresses. In 5th grade I stopped wearing them and started wearing hand me downs form my older brothers. because of my outer appereance mixed with my boyish behavior I was called names by some mean kids but hey I either ignored them or challenged them fo a fist fight (I won…most times).
So the name calling stopped and I lived in peace until 8th grade came along. One of my close friends outed herself as “bisexual”. I was like “wait a minute…I can like both? Boys AND girls?”. It took me a half a year to accept the Idea of me liking both girls and boys. In 9th grade I wa certain that one could classify myself as a bisexual. But then my “bisexual” friend came out as a lesbian and explained that she only outed herself as bisexual because she wasn’t 100% shure she only liked girls. But now she was.
So my inner struggle began…I thought that I maybe was lying to myself because being bisexual was “easyer” than being a lesbian. on other days I thought that I must be a lesbian because not every boy seems attractive to me.
My wohle friendgroup is pretty gay…like LGBTQ..yep we have every damn letter represented. Don’t get me wrong I love my friends but sometimes they overdid it a bit with things like: “You totally look like a lesbian today”. They didn’t know that their “encourageing” words confused me even more.
On some days I just wanted to be a lesbian just to stop that ongoing confusion in my head. But I still liked boys and had to deal with that.
I am not confused and therefore a “bisexual” I am just a confused bisexual.
Now 2 years later I am out in school, to my famely and friends and am currently dating a girl. The confusion stopped and I accepted myself.

My coming out:
The first time I came out to someone other than myself was in 9th grade when I told my friends that I was “bisexual”. They weren’t suprised and freaking high fived me. So a very positive experience.
Half a year later I came out to my dad(my mom and dad are married for 33 years now) he promised not to say anything to my mom. We were driving back from the ski-lift. My father was telling me fun facts to the song we were currently listening to. One of these facts was that the female singer was married to a woman. I said:”why marry a man if you could have a wife”. He just looked at me and agreed “true”. A few minutes later he turned to me and asked “are you a lesbian now?” I sayed: “No, bisexual”. He nodded. No questions asked.

so 2 positive reactions to my coming out. I also have had negative ones but I already wrote a little bit too much XD sooo
I wish you all the best and hope that you are living in a save environment that allows you to be yourself.
-Alina

Bisexual or probably pansexual?

I am not fully out yet. Sometime, I still need to shield my sexual identity for several different reasons. First, maybe because I don’t really want to be labelled. Second, perhaps just simply out of fear.

Hi, I am from Indonesia. I am at my 40s, and I am a single mom. I had came out as bisexual in small circle of my friends & fam a long ago, but it wasn’t because I was feeling anxious or “awaken” to my queer side. It was purely that time out of curiosity and adventurous sense.

I was in highschool when I read Freud’s. I came to conclusion that somehow everyone born with both male/female potential in them. I began to notice my own, and tried to explore that part by admitting that my past attraction to the same-sex was not mere platonic or so so. It was the same kind with my attraction to the opposite-sex. It also brought me to revisit my childhood girl crush when I was in 2nd grade junior high (12/13 y.o.) which I did not fully aware that I was making a courtship attempt toward her that time.

In highschool, after opening the lock to my universal self – and let me free to identify myself as sexually fluid, I started flowing with same-sex crush, though not doing anything about it.

There was no different, come to think about it now, between my feeling to girl before I am aware of my sexuality and after admitting it. The feeling were the same, but by making a name on myself, I then know how to name the feeling as well. “I had crush with girl”.

Despite so, I did not make any attempt to experience. It was pretty rare for me being bisexual in my small city, with no meeting of the same type of peer, and honestly I didn’t feel comfortable either to be involved or being identified marginal in society.

I am an aquarius, my choice is not to be identified with others, I am just being honest with myself and simply being me. So my sexual identity is MY identity, my choice, my own – yet I didn’t feel the need to act on it.

Later in my life, after my first divorce when I was in my early 20th, I decided to explore the notion of love. I was thinking that I had never experienced feeling in love before, as my head was focused on goal and success. But being a divorcee revealed the need for me to understand love. So again, I made my exploration and adventure. Brought up in conventional and religious environment, I started to experience the pre-marital sex with few men, and I also embraced the feeling of falling in love for the first time with my female friend. Nothing went well (nothing last).

Then in my late 20, I got pregnant. A consequence of my wild free spirited. The guy wanted me to get an abortion as he was married and with me it mere a fling. But never crossed in my mind to take that journey. I was ready to be responsible so I refused. I asked him to marry me instead for the sake of the future born child (as it was mere for legal sake) – he did, for a while, before then he ran away when I was 8 months pregnant.

My course of life changed of course being a single parent. Wanted to build my future success again, I also took a shift in career-wise. I moved to a village as a general practitioner (medical doctor), a stepping stone to collect fund to continue education. I left my son with parents. This decision, would be the milestone of my love life as a queer.

There I met a colleague. A “straight” wife. We found the attraction quite instantly. Divorced her abusive husband, we started “living together”. We had an affair during that time in a scrutinized village environment. I was not scared, I even brought her to meet my family and admitted her as my lover to my best friends. I met her family too, but everything was mere an “unspoken truth” to them.

Not like me, she was not fully embraced her sexuality. To her she was not ready to live truthfully within bigotry society. She chose to leave and marry man.

It was the first time that Love trully changed my life and forced me to go on self journey to find out more about who I am. It was also the first time I realized that I may love woman more than a man. My sexual exprience with her was off the chart. I never felt it before with men. I never realized this before.

When Dom (before coming out) shared her opinion the difference between intimacy with male vs female, I relate to that 100%. It was exactly how I said it a long ago, it was also later how I felt when I finally being sexual with same-sex.

Now, I am just a Self. Enjoying my singlehood. Still looking for my truelove/soulmate/twinflame. Not yet decided for sure if I want to be identified publicly as queer. And fully occupied in planning for my future career as again I make an “adventure” toward it after many defeats.

Nevertheless, I want to send lots of love to people who is unique and marginal. Who are unable to see themselves fit the norm or societal tagged. I believe that we all one, the spark of the Universal Mind, the spark of the Divine Love. I believe that we all chosen to learn and to let others learn about love, inclusivity & diversity. I believe that love is love and that love is “God”.

I wish one day, I gain the opportunity and time to join the “wave”. Be part of the community who fight for the values I mentioned above. For now, I am happy within my shell, watching you guys creating your momentum in life.

Love, light.