Community Rainbow Waves

Alya

I knew I was gay when I was in 5th/6th grade. A year later I came out to my best friend, the same month I got in to psychiatry because of depression. There they forced me to come out to my mother because “it would help me”, she just said its just a phase and she didn’t believe me, while I sat next to her crying. 2018 I was on my first CSD and my stepsister picked me up. As she saw me she was like “oh but you’re not one of them, right?” and I just started giggling. Thats how I came out to her. 3 Months later my stepsis, stepmom an my dad sit in our garden and my sis told them I wanted to tell them something, which I definitely didn’t because I wasn’t ready yet, I was the whole time like “no I don’t” so my stepmom starts to ask “did you smoke” “hell no” I replied, “did you got a tattoo?” “no” are you a lesbian?” and I instantly started to cry. Thats how I came out to my Papa. One and a half year later on new years eve 2019/2020 I came out to my mom(again) my stepdad, my foster mom and dad, friends of them. Now I am OUT AND PROUD 🙂

Gay

I chose to indentify as gay, because I feel like I can use that as an umbrella term. To me the word lesbian doesn’t seem quite right, because it completely rules out men, and though I’ve never fallen for a man before, I don’t think it’s impossible.

Some family members and most of my friends know I’m not straight, but I fear to come out the the public, not only because I’m scared of their reactions but I also kind of feel like it’s none of their business? I’m not in a relationship nor have I ever been before, but I don’t feel like disclosing my sexuality without reason you know?

However, your story did inspire me to at least write my story somewhere, and perhaps, with all sadness going on in the world right now I might as well put this story up somewhere else, to share some colour and be true to myself.

Life’s a lot of fun if you look on the bright side.

Hi, my name is Amélie but my friends call me Waméliz (don’t try to understand).
I’m 18 years old.
And sorry if my English is disastrous because I’m French.
Anyway, since primary school my thing has always been to hang out with boys, to play at fights, to dress up as a pirate for fancy dress birthday parties, to hate dresses, tights, ballerinas etc…
For a long time I was regularly at my grandparents’ house.
And like all self-respecting old people, I had the right to a classical education: a girl doesn’t dress like a boy, two girls kissing “my gods what a horror” and the racist thought…
As a child I didn’t understand all that.
I just wanted to put on jeans and a T-shirt and go have fun with my friends.

As time went by, I started to feminize myself more and more, imitating other girls my age, having boyfriends and hanging out with girls only.

It wasn’t until I was in 9th grade that I realized that I liked girls.
There was a new girl in our class, at the time I didn’t pay too much attention to her.
But one day she had a lot of trouble carrying her bag because as she was handicapped sometimes her knee joints got blocked.

So I helped her carry her bag home, and I continued to help her like this every night after school.
She was very much on my mind and I loved spending time with her.
In college, being gay wasn’t very well accepted, even though harassment had gotten under my skin, so when I imagined coming out, I didn’t want to take any chances.
So I decided to keep my thoughts to myself (something that should never be done, it seems).
But I did tell my loved ones about it.
Starting with my mother, I told her about this girl with whom I shared the road every night.
To tell her in the final sentence “I think I am in love with her”.
And my mother replied, “I thought so, my daughter”.
Yes, well, there are better things, but at least it went well.
Then it was my father’s turn, as there is not much communication with him, I wanted to tell him quickly.
That is to say, just before he went to sleep, “Good night daddy, and I also wanted to tell you that I am in love with a girl”.

Might as well tell you that he didn’t have a very good night, the next day he told me that I didn’t have sex with a boy I couldn’t know who I really loved, I asked him if he had slept with boys to find out if he really loved my mother but he took it the wrong way and ended the conversation.

Months went by and I decided to tell the girl how I felt.
To make a long story short, she told me she didn’t feel the same way and stopped seeing each other (no my life is not a TV show), so what can I say except unicorn poop?
When I arrived in high school, that’s when I could fully assume who I am, a PANSEXUAL girl who wants to be friends with everyone and who loves people big, small, white, black, yellow, green, multicolored etc…
My last two coming-out dates were this year.
One to my friends who took it very well except for one who asked me if I ever fell in love with an animal and I said “yes of course be careful with your dog the next time I come to your place”.

And the last one to my grandmother, she must have had at least three heart attacks but she finally accepted it.

I’m proud to be part of the LGBTQ2SZETRWU community… there you go.

Gay

I guess I started questioning my sexuality when I was 10, I’d experimented with girls and was just very confused. I didn’t know what it meant to like girls, but some part of me, did. As I grew up, my friends would ask me if I was bi, because they’d noticed how I looked at our vice principal, who happened to be a woman. I denied it. I denied liking anyone, until I met my boyfriend. He was my safety net. No one really questioned me anymore, because I had a boyfriend, so pretty much everyone just assumed I was straight, except the few people who knew. *Coughs* The girls I’d been with behind closed doors, and my therapist. When I was 15, my therapist outed me as bisexual to my mother, I was terrified because I grew up in a very closed-minded, judgmental, “Christian” “family”. Being too scared to tell the truth, I chickened out and said I was bi. This came with more questions, mainly from my mother. “I thought you liked boys, you have a boyfriend”. Then came the shame. “It’s a sin, you’ll go to hell”. And at the time, I didn’t know better, and wasn’t taught better, so I believed it. I believed I was going to go to hell, if I was myself. If I liked anyone but boys. So I tried. I tried to like boys for as long as I could. I dated boys. In secret, I also dated girls. I didn’t know how to stop how I felt, I was so confused. I was too sheltered and didn’t have any guidance or anyone to talk to about these feelings, until I discovered the TV show South Of Nowhere, in 2005. I was still 15, and didn’t have much supervision at night when my mom was at work, so I could watch whatever I wanted on TV. South Of Nowhere is a show about a girl very much like me, came from a very closed-minded, “Christian” family. She met a girl and started questioning everything. Ironically, the same character that made her question everything, made my brain go crazy. I’d liked this character way more than what was considered “normal”. I started deep diving into my thoughts and feelings with every new episode, and slowly, eventually I started realizing who and what I was. The show had a bunch of different perspectives so it really helped guide me to figure out what MY beliefs and opinions were. By the end of the series, 5ish years later, I had finally admitted it to myself. I had to come out to myself first. I was gay. There was guilt, I was still ashamed of who I was. It took a few years for me to be okay with who and what I was, but eventually I was. When I was about 20 my mom and I were in a heated argument about gay and transgender people, and she made me pretty upset so I told her that she was hurting my feelings because I’m one of the people she was being so hateful towards, she didn’t really understand and sort of just blew it off, didn’t really say anything. About a year later, when I was 21, the same argument happened, again. (We’d had a lot of those arguments). And again, I told her she was hurting me because I was gay. This time, she heard me.

My name is Hope, and I’m an out and proud, gay woman.

Feel free to exhale homosexuality

For me, understanding my sexuality has meant going through several mental chaos. Before understanding my sexual identity, I had to first understand my sexuality. In my adolescence, while everyone was talking about girls, boys, sex or kissing, I only thought about playing sports and going to the movies. I was not attracted to anyone, neither boys nor girls. And that made me feel like a freak, because everyone was already having a partner or, at least, a taste for someone, except me. I went out with a couple of guys and those have been (until now, 10 years later) the most boring dates of my life.
Also, before discovering my homosexuality I discovered sexual pleasure through masturbation. The first times I felt guilty about doing it because everybody knows that men masturbate, but what a horror if a girl does it. And so, for a couple more years, I was still not attracted to anyone, and did not need to have anyone.
It wasn’t until I entered college that I met the love of my life. This girl stirred up each and every one of my hormones that, until that moment, seemed dead. Unfortunately, it was an unrequited love, because she was suffering for a boy who did not pay as much attention to her as I was suffering for her.
The first person I told about my possible homosexuality was my best friend. His words of comfort (because yes, for him that confession was comforting) were “Relax, you’re not gay, you’re just confused. Let me tell you, there is nothing more confusing than when you are told you are confused. His consolation created a (other) mental chaos for me: how do I know if what I’m feeling is real or if I’m making it up? How do I know if I’m one hundred percent sure of something or if I’m confused and haven’t noticed? Furthermore, what does it mean that I am confused?
With those doubts in my head I entered my first relationship. The first month was a mental chaos because it was my first time (in every way), and it was with a girl. Because of the macho and conservative country I live in (Peru), being gay was seen as something negative. (Level: the same police officers assaulted both gays and lesbians) So, for someone like me, who has always tried to do the right thing and be a better person in every way, the idea of being gay made me ashamed. I mean, I knew it wasn’t a bad thing per se, but I was embarrassed that I wasn’t “normal. I was embarrassed to be something that was seen in a bad light. That’s why I didn’t tell my parents about it. However, as the days went by the mental chaos became more acute, so I thought it would be best to talk about it, maybe I could lean on them to understand me…. The reaction they had was shocking. You definitely don’t really know your family until you come out of the closet. From my mother I expected some rejection for being Catholic, but there was only silence. Not a single word for several days. Until she came over one night and told me to be careful because I could get AIDS. Yes, AIDS. It was the middle of the 21st century and I still believed that you get AIDS just by coming out of the closet.
On the other hand, my father is half relaxed, to the point of letting my brother smoke marijuana in the house. But it seems that drugs are not as serious as homosexuality. As soon as I finished telling him that I thought he was gay, my father started crying. There is nothing more ridiculous than seeing a big, loud person cry because his daughter is a lesbian. He started crying because it turns out that homosexuality is a disease. It turns out that homosexuality is a product of some childhood trauma. It turns out that homosexuality is an impediment to marrying and giving birth to grandchildren. And, in between cries, she began to apologize for whatever she did to make me believe it was “it”.
So far, when I think about that scene, I am aware that my departure was not tragic, it was just disappointing. At that moment I realized that I was alone in all that mental chaos. And I accepted it. You’re not always going to have someone to lean on, so I decided to raise myself to be my own source of support. But, of course, going through that chaos alone is not easy. It took me several more years before I could stop feeling ashamed of myself, and feel truly comfortable in my own skin. And it is only now, at 28, that I feel free to breathe out my homosexuality.
Now, because I’m half antisocial, my story hasn’t inspired anyone (because I don’t talk to anyone), but, if anyone keeps reading this far, what I can tell you is that, it’s not about forcing someone to accept you, it’s about how, as long as you love yourself, little by little things and people around you are going to shape up to you. And, one more thing, Respect. Even if someone lowers himself to the level of disrespect or seeks to harm you, as long as you hold your head up high, little by little you will be the one who wins.
Thank you very much for reading this will. Much love.
Ariana.

Love is universal, kindness is beautiful

Now when I think back, I realized that I always felt this way, but growing up in a heavily religious country I didn’t know this was normal.
The talk was always “when a men and I women love each other” (fill in the rest). This construct of what love and partnership is supposed to be, leaves no room to be truly open and explore feelings.
I thought I was weird, I thought something was wrong with me and so I didn’t say anything to anyone.

On top of that, the message that everything outside heterosexuality as “unnatural and sinful” was present in society and even school. There was no reference to same sex couples, gender fluidity or anything else.

I remember having feelings for girls and when they became friends (that is how I explained it) is friendship and nothing else, but it also happened with boys, which added to the predicament.

Then around grade 8 news about violence against “those people” were more visible (or maybe I noticed more) stories of rape and murder with no one being brought to justice.
I can’t like girls it is dangerous…. fear really intensified in me!
So I concentrated on the boy part of my feelings, pushing my feelings for girls way, way down!

I didn’t want to admit it but I still felt not quite myself, there was more to me. I didn’t take the time to understand what my feelings really were, there was no language I knew about how to express what I was feeling.

Fast forward and I came to Canada, I wish I could say that I felt free to explore all sides of me, but
A new country – culture shock and feeling lost
High school while learning a new language
Wasn’t a citizen – fear of being turned back

My mind was so busy with, learn the language, pass classes, make money to survive, help mom in everything needed – calls, translation, doctors etc., I didn’t have time to be a teen, let alone revisiting my feelings for people, because no matter how much I pushed them down, these feelings were always there.

I was lucky and towards my final year I made really good friends and things started to look up.
Even though there were instances in which I wanted to come out, I felt it wasn’t the time yet.

Eventually my mom started the conversation “Maybe you can find a nice guy to marry and have kids with” I told myself “this is it, this is how I’m going to come out to my mom”
I turned to her and I said: what if I fall in love and it is not a guy, what if I fall for someone else?

She looked at me, paused for a couple of seconds (which felt like an eternity) and said “As long as you love and respect each other, is all the same to me, I just want you to be happy”
I cannot explain what I felt at that moment
I will carry those words with me forever!

Since then I’ve come out on different occasions depending on my comfort level, I know the people who truly care about me will have my back.
Coming to terms with this part of me has filled me with a warm sense of community that I didn’t know I could be part of and opened up some amazing opportunities to form new friendships.

Fear can be strong but LOVE is powerful!

I am glad I finally let go, because loving openly brought life to a new level where essence matters more! I now know love is more complex than the narrow narrative I was taught.

Love is universal and kindness is beautiful
Let us ascend to new heights together

I am queer and happy to be in this journey
I can’t wait to see what life brings!
Mace

I am proud of who I am

All my life I was asked ‘are you a lesbian?’ And I always said ‘No I’m not.’ It started when I was really young, like 9 years old, people noticed I loved being around girls and loved taking care of them, so they assumed I was into girls. For pretty much 10 years I thought I liked boys, so I dated boys throughout middle school and high school. I had a terrible relationship when I was 16 with a boy who always wanted to have sex, he broke up with me because I kept pushing him away. The truth is I didn’t trust him, so I couldn’t give myself to him. It was a very bad breakup and then he harassed me for the rest of the school year, my mom had to step in because I was mentally broken. I haven’t been in love with a boy since then.
When I was 19 I moved to my own flat for the first time, I started university and I was very happy to be done with high school and to start over. That’s when I fell in love with a girl for the first time. Terrible story, it was 13 months of pure pain because she wasn’t in love with me. I was so jealous of everyone flirting with her and she made a friend on Twitter and I felt like something was going on between them. I was so mad in jealousy… that friend came to our hometown during summer so we met and I hated her so much but I was nice to her anyway cause I don’t want to be a bad person. After that they went on holiday together and I got so mad that a month after that I had a huge fight with that girl on Twitter. Funny story, that girl I was so jealous of has been my girlfriend for over 3 years now haha. Everything changed so fast and I still cannot believe that I fell in love with her after all the hatred we felt for each other.

About my coming out, I told my mom a month after I started university, I was back home for the weekend and I wanted to tell her so I did and I cried so much because her reaction was amazing. She was totally ok with it. Then my siblings pretty much knew before I did so they were already fine with it. Last but not least I had to talk I my best friend at the time, who’s bisexual. I told her I fell in love with a girl and she told ‘look baby, I knew, we all did, but I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted you to find out on your own’ and that meant the world to me. So coming out was beyond ok for me, I feel extremely lucky to be surrounded by such open-minded people and I know many of us are struggling out there.

Today, I’m 23 and I’m happy. I am so grateful to have such amazing women to look up to, of course Dominique and Kat, and so many others.

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.

A gay young woman

This is the story of how coming out changed my life.

I was 16 years old and a junior in high school in the close-minded region of small town, Texas. I grew up a tomboy, with seven older brothers and a single, survivor of a mother, never wanting to be the damsel-in-distress or victim of the story. It was when I got a little bit into my teen years that I realized embracing the feminine side of myself didn’t make me weaker or less than at all. That’s what my mother taught me.

My beautiful, strong, hair-brained, peachy pink nails-for-days mother. I remember the night she looked at me with that stubborn spark in her eye and told me, “you’re gonna break the cycle, baby girl”. She wanted more for me than that somber cycle of violence I watched her go through growing up, that she watched her mother go through. I remember feeling empowered. I remember thinking to myself that I wouldn’t let her down and I would never apologize for being who I was.

Well, needless to say I carried that experience and many more like it into my years of high school. The first few of which I was rather awkward (naturally), all converse and band t-shirts, but all the while unapologetically myself. Social norms weren’t my thing and I really didn’t care about impressing anybody. I kept mostly to myself and my small circle of friends. Beside theater, I kept mostly out off extra-curricular activities as well, which looking back on I do regret.

Up until this point I had only dated boys and only ever thought of myself as straight. I mean, of course I knew queer people and would (rarely) see a queer character on a tv show or movie that I’d watched, but I never thought of myself that way. It never, ever occurred to me that there was a reason I never really felt that spark when I kissed guys, never felt 100% myself when I was in relationships. I thought maybe it was just because I was young and needed more experience, I thought it was normal.

Junior year is when things started to change. I met a girl. Cheesy as hell, I know, but true. And I guess “met” isn’t the right word. We’d known each other since the 8th grade but our only interaction consisted only of harmless banter in passing. Friends of friends and in completely different social circles. She was a cheerleader. She did beauty pageants and coached gymnastics to kids on the weekends. She was gorgeous and funny and smart. In other words, she was on the other fucking end of the spectrum in relation to where I was. Me, the girl who read books in the back through 90% of my classes, played guitar in a garage band, drove a motorcycle to school and had to physically restrain myself from answering every question ever with a sarcastic one-liner. We shouldn’t have had anything in common… At least, that’s what I thought.

We got a bit closer Junior year, having an advanced English class together, and it was in that class I started to realize little miss perfect didn’t exactly have it all. It was obvious she was struggling with something at home that was weighing on her.

Later that semester she eventually confided in me that she was gay. She told me she’d been with girls before and when her parents found out it was bad. They sent her to church camp. Made her shut that shit down so hard the light went missing from her. I remember how much it hurt my heart to see it. We became even closer after that, as you do, and the fact that I knew she was gay brought a few things to my attention:

Like the way she looked at me.

Or the way I felt when she looked at me.

And I was suddenly very interested in watching movies and tv shows about lesbians. It was like I desperately needed to see myself in something that could validate what I was feeling. Like I needed to see that I didn’t have to act a certain stereotypical way to be feeling the way I was. Where I could see a gay character that wasn’t one dimensional. That showcased a variety of authentic gay relationships that weren’t pervy or flat. And when I did find shows like that, it made all the difference in the world. #WayHaught

By that point I was in full gay panic. I was sorta kinda dating this guy who wasn’t even horrible but definitely didn’t make me feel the way she did and I did not know what to do with this new information about myself. Was I gay??? Did I like her??? Suddenly I was spiraling into a void of self-doubt and fear with a dash of excitement and hope. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do, but the answers came soon enough…

We decided to have a sleepover with my best friend and watch Girltrash the movie (if you haven’t seen it you’re missing out, it’s literally about lesbians in a rock band AND it’s a musical). Anyway, so there we were. Laying next to each other in my bed. My best friend was asleep by that point, or at least we thought she was at the time (we found out later she wasn’t actually asleep but didn’t want to ruin our moment so shout out to her, thanks for being a homie). Meanwhile, I was painfully aware of every breath I made. Every move. I was finding it extremely difficult to keep my eyes on the tv. Finally, after sitting through the entire movie in a state of stomach-turning anticipation, the protagonists in the movie had their climatic kissing scene and all I remember is her turning to me with this smirk on her face and asking me, “so are you gonna kiss me or what?”

So I did.

And a fundamental shift took place inside me at that moment, like a light finally getting turned on after years in the dark or a giant puzzle piece clicking into place. It was easy. It was carefree. It was scary, sexy, and safe all at the same time. It was in that moment, making out with a cheerleader in my lap, that for the first time I thought… I am SO fucking gay.

Now I’m definitely not saying we lived happily ever after and that was that. No, high school is never that easy. We had a very intense run that was destined for failure simply due to the fact that she could never be fully out and openly gay due to her family. She ended up moving to the city and a different school, and being my first love of course I thought we should keep trying anyway and well, it just didn’t work out.

I have some very dark self-reflective memories from back then, as well as some really beautiful ones with her. All in all I’m extremely grateful for the experience and for that girl, who had such a crucial role in helping me discover myself, and a truly hope she’s doing well these days. After all, if it wasn’t for that self-realization, I never would have come into my own the way I did at the end of high school.

During my senior year I finally decided to act and compete in theater instead of just being behind the curtain. I became the mascot because why the fuck not? I ran for homecoming queen as a joke and actually won. I was friends with anyone from any side of the social spectrum and I graduated high school in a much more positive place than I started.

Because after everything that had happened, I completely and utterly embraced being a girl and being gay. Everything just made so much more sense. Why couldn’t I be all the things that made me feel more, well, me? Like guitar, leather jackets, makeup, and motorcycles? Coming out completely changed my take on life. I didn’t just come out of the closet, I came out of my shell.

Now at almost 22 years old, I’ve done things I never would have thought I’d have the courage to do. I survived the death of my mother, something I thought surely would have killed me. I learned to support myself completely. I started a career as a 911 dispatcher. My band recently went to the studio to record our first EP and have shows lined up later this year. I decided to stop being so scared all the time, that if I’m being true to myself and who I am, it doesn’t matter if I fail at times. I’ve continuously kept trying to do what makes me happy and the results have been boundless. I’ve learned SO much about who I want to be and the positive impact I want to make in this world. All because I was completely, truly, and still unapologetically me.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk, have a nice life nerds, and don’t forget to love yourself!

Hannah

When I was 12 years old, I had realized that I had been an oddball for the entirety of my schooling. I was different, almost like an outcast and I didn’t like it. I had realized that I like girls. My parents along with the rest of my family are incredibly homophobic, so I decided to internalize everything. I had done so for 6 years until I got to my senior year of high school. I wanted to start being myself, but I knew I couldn’t as long as I was under the same roof as my parents. Summer 2019, I moved in to college and within 3 days of being there, I had already met a girl. I could finally be myself. My parents didn’t have to know about it, everything was okay. People at college really accepted me for who I was and it was so different compared to high school. However, both my parents ended up finding out along with the rest of my family the day before my 19th birthday. A lot of my family are now hesitant to talk to me. In this period of time, lack of acceptance from them made my motivation decline. I had stopped going to my classes, I stopped eating, and I stopped taking care of myself all around. I ended up having to drop most of my classes as a music therapy major due to failing grades. I lost scholarships and money, but worst of all I had lost myself. When 2nd semester came around, I was excited for a fresh start. However, my mental health hadn’t gotten any better. I ended up having to drop out of college on a full ride in which I had been studying for my dream job as a music therapist. I live at home now with my parents and never stop getting to hear the homophobia. I’m doing my best to try and support myself as well as my girlfriend. I’m trying to get a stable job so that I can move out before the end of 2020 and plan to apply to a 2 year paralegal program so I can have a somewhat stable career. Currently, I’m a full time musician trying to record music and get my name out there for people to hear. All I have ever wanted to do was make people feel good with the music that I make, whether they relate to it or not. I want to make music for people like me, but also for people who aren’t like me. Anything to bring more positivity and awareness to the world.
I usually label myself as a lesbian, but I just want to love who I love and have it not be an issue to others that I just so happen to be attracted to women. I know that good things are to come for me, all I can do is be patient. But I’m proud to say that I like women. I had never had this much pride for something since I started playing music and it’s such a beautifully bizarre feeling. I’m happy to say that I am a 19 year old raging homosexual female.