Community Rainbow Waves

I am a survivor

If you had me write this several years ago this would have been a very different story. Come to think of it I did write that one.
But today is today and today I’m more myself then I have ever been.

You see in some ways I’ve been “tailoring” myself for years and not even just towards my sexuality. I have high functioning autism. As result I have a hard time connecting with others or come off more abrasive than others or not understanding social cues. For years I wore a mask pretending that wasn’t me. Pretending I wasn’t hurt by things and most of all pretending I fit in.

With that said. I was in college when I was first introduced to the idea that woman could like woman. And I say that because I was a super naive kid, never had boyfriend, never had the sex talk, never new what liking someone was. If I looked back today, like everyone I’d see the signs.

There was this woman, till this day she’s makes my head spin. She was gorgeous but didn’t exactly treat me right. But she was first one who told me what I was or might be a lesbian or bisexual. And that was first times I heard those words. And I knew I thought she was all that but also wasnt sure I didn’t like men.

It was around this time that two things happened that. I won’t go into great detail but I was sexual assualted and my mother told me that bisexuality didn’t exist. Needless to say I was probably at my lowest. And it would take me along time to finally accept two things. a. my mother was wrong and b. being assualted didn’t turn me gay.

I went thru living struggling and being a shadow of my true self for years. I had boyfriend. I didn’t feel comfortable. I liked another woman who again didn’t treat me right (you see the other pattern developing). Anyways, I graduated and came back home. Home to a life where I had to live with someone who didn’t believe in what I thought was my true self.

During this I really struggled keeping friendships, fitting in and not being hurt. I found a character on the tv and her actresses real life husbands band that started to turn things around for me. The day Alex Danvers came out was day I finally got myself. At least I thought I did. But in world where things are constantly changing that would change too. At that time, things like I never felt comfortable with being intimate (toward guys) and others as well.

The actress husband has a song about unmasking yourself. Written about their son with autism. And between these two things I was becoming ok with my reality. I had autism and I liked woman.

They were what held me together for a couple years there. Then there was the TimesUp movement which challenged my reality. I broke for first time since that challenging first year after. I had never delt with it. Deep down I still thought it was why I like woman (and why I forced myself to go dates with guys).

I found people and this actress who helped me realize the truth. And today if I think about I know it too. Man might make me uncomfortable but I liked that woman before this happened and it doesn’t mean I won’t like a man who understands.

It was around this time I found Wynonna Earp, At Clexacon. And I found a group of people willing to accept me for me. And tho it took couple more years to make into the Earper famdom I’m here and I stay (despite not always feeling like I fit in). Regardless thru Alex Danvers (and Maggie Sawyer and her actress who helps me be ok with my parents not accepting me) I met the wayhaught story and eventually the wynonna story.

And here we come to last year. The year where I really started to be my authentic queer self.
It was year of finding people who were ok without using a label. For awhile I thought had to fit in a box had to have label. Considering my hidden disability, being different was always how I was. We also live in a world where we are constantly told to be one way or the other. And I sill had a mother who didn’t quite understand.

However, when the actress who talked about not using a label at Clexacon on ComingOutPodcast was the moment I decided I could come out as pansexual, at the time I still wanted to fit in to box for my mother sake. And I came home from that I told my mother this was it was. Love is love. I’m going to like who I like.

It was until Kat came out and I had small conversation with her about it, that I really truly felt not using pansexual was the way to go for me. In her words, “let’s just love who we love cuz the world has bigger problems. “

And now with Dom coming out, being in love with “All humans” I’m even more sure of myself. Despite my mother telling me im only into girls to fit in. – see Maggie Sawyer’s line “I’m Already Good. “

Its been a rocky road. It’s been a long time coming, remember I said looking back I saw things. I always almost drawn to the woman I’m TV shows. Watching shows for woman. Yeah sure there was few man thrown in there. I remember a girl from high school, I’d always give her the jobro posters and looking back I had crush I wasn’t able comprehend. And that’s ok, I wasn’t ready. It would take abundance of factors and I wouldn’t change a part of it (I wish somethings didn’t happen but I wouldn’t be who I am today).

Just remember, as someone once told me, it’s ok not to know who you are.

Here goes one more time
Fuck Labels.
I love who I love.
Woman, Man.
White Black or Purple.
Gay, Straight.
Trans or Non Binary.
Be every color of the rainbow.
I too love ALL humans.

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.

Larissa

I’m a 30 years old queer cisgender woman that knew from a very young age that I liked girls. However, I didn’t really know that I was a lesbian at that time.
As far as I can remeber I had crushes on girls, but as a kid growing up in the northeast of Brazil (a very “tradicional” region) I had no queer references whatsoever. I just knew that girls were suppost to like boys, so I faked it, throughout my entire adolescence. I dated boys and kisses a lot of them so that no one would suspect that I was actually in love with a girl friend.
It was only when I went to college in another state across the country that I had the courage to try to kiss a girl. In a traditional Brazilian festivity, carnaval, I kissed a girl for the first time and that made me realize how much I wanted to do that for my entire life. Since It was a party and there was a lot of alchool involved none of my friends said much about It, and I actually ended up with some other guys for almost an year before finally having the guts to admit first to my self, that I was definitely not into guys.
It was watching shows with queer characters that helped me build the stregnth to come out, in special Naya Rivera’s Santana in Glee. I related so much to her that I started to feel the need to be honest with myself, to stop hiding who I was, that’s when I leaned on my first openly gay friend to start going out more, meeting girls and telling people around me that I was gay. I then came out to my childhood friends who still lived in my hometown and it was such a releaf to hear them say that they loved just the same. It was time to tell my family. In a visit to my parents house, on a long weekend that my dad was way I told my mother. Her reaction was as far from undestanding as it could possibly be, she didn’t speak to me again for several months. As I left the very next day, heart broken, I didn’t really know what to do next. My mother told my older sister who called me and said that my mom was devasted, crying all the time and not eating, begging me to go to a therapist. I knew that they were expecting me to be “cured” by this therapist but I went anyway to try to make amends. It turned out the therapist was a really nice woman who knew my sister and their intentions and told me at the first session that she wasn’t there to cure me, but to help me cope with everything I was going throutgh. My father was the real light for me at that time, he asked me to have patience with my mom, that she was taking it pretty hard but was trying to be better for me and that he would love me for the both of them until then.
A lot of scars had to heal before I started to feel whole again and be proud of who I am, but as I was going through all of this with my mom I kept reminding myself that I needed to treat her with the same love and acceptence that I expected to get from her. Now, eight year later, she has come a long way. It took patience and love, but most importantly I knew I wasn’t alone.

Love has a short life, there is no limit to oblivion… But that’s the value of love.

Since childhood. But the realization and acceptance of myself came at a more conscious age. Now I’m happy about it. I’ve been living with the person I love for a few years now and the wonderful thing is that for her I was a revelation of her sexuality and an opportunity to realize that the world is not only black and white. I live in Russia, a country that tolerance and understanding of such I am not particularly different, there is still slipping the foundations of the past, and that’s probably a minus, but there are many like me that gradually we change the attitude to us.

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.

Queer

I think I’ve always known I was part different, but growing up in a very small town I did not grow up with anyone in the queer community around me, or at least they were not open.

When I was in grade 8, my mom moved us to the next town over which was slightly bigger. There I fell in with a bunch of misfits, some of which were exploring their sexualities.
At the time, I was still dating guys, although I was tossing them aside before anything could become real.

In grade nine, I finally worked up the courage to tell one of my then bisexual friends that I thought I might also be bisexual. She then went on to dismiss me and said, and I quote “you’re our straight friend”. As you might have guessed this pushed me even further back into the closet, when I stayed until after I graduated.

It wasn’t until I moved across the province to the big city of Vancouver for school, that I actually allowed myself to start to come out to my new school mates. There I met this older Brazilian girl, who was my first relationship with a girl….and wow, eye opener.

Since then I have been dating women, identifying as queer as gay/lesbian/bi/pan feel too restrictive for me. I am pretty open with my friends that I have made since college and new people I have met, I am still not out to my family and a lot of my childhood friends back home.

I’m pretty sure my parents know, I mean I basically dressed and acted like a boy from the ages of 5-11. But I became rather famine during high school. One moment I feel ready to tell them and think they will be fine, and the next I remember and old comment they made or something they said recently that makes me hold back.

I’m 26, and I’m still a bit of a hot mess when it comes to relationships. But working on it.

Anaïs

I am 27 and I’ve liked girls for as long as I can remember. When I was 5, I wrote a love letter to a girl in my class, but never gave it to her ’cause I was too shy. Years later I found the letter and felt so embarrassed that I threw it away. At that time, I was already brainwashed into thinking that being queer was wrong and dirty. From that day on I decided that I’d never think of girls again, and that’s what I did… Until high school, at least!
I remember watching the tv show Skins when I was a teen just because it portrayed a lesbian couple and it was everything that I could find in terms of representation. I feel so happy for the kids today that have access to amazing content such as Wynnona Earp. Positive queer representation can change people’s lives <3
During high school I ended up kissing some girls thanks to Spin the Bottle, which gave me the courage to kiss a friend at a party at my senior year and I reeeeeally fell for her! I spent months with a major crush on her! At that moment I thought: ok, I’m definitely not straight! Maybe Bissexual?
I had some boyfriends here and there and managed to get my first girlfriend at college. And when we first got together, I remember thinking: so that’s how being attracted to someone is supposed to feel like!!
I never planned on coming out because I was still figuring out my own feelings. I was dating this girl, it was Dia dos Namorados (something like Valentine’s Day) and I was nervous enough having this secret relationship and stuff, but my mom could tell that something was off (moms, am I right?). She spent the entire day asking me what was wrong and why I couldn’t talk to her, until I burst out that I was in love with a girl.
My mom cried for weeks and went through all those grief stages, but my dad was my rock. We’ve never been close, me and my dad, but he really stood up for me when my mom was freaking out, and I believe we got closer because of that.
My first year out of the closet wasn’t easy, me and my mom argued a lot. Every week I would find a new video or research about sexuality and gender and try to explain to her that it was all normal and it wasn’t a choice. And so, a year went by, my first relationship ended, and we spent another year without talking about my sexuality at home. During this year I got to focus on my feelings and found out that I identified as a lesbian. Since that, I started living out and proud and my family followed along at their own pace.
Today we couldn’t be better. I’m engaged to the most amazing woman, who my family absolutely loves (yay!). We’ve been together for 6 years and we have 2 cats (living the dream! Hahaha). My fiancé is funny, smart, beautiful and always has my back. We’ve grown so much together, as a couple and as individuals, and I am really proud of this whole journey.
So, I just wanna tell you guys what other strangers on the internet told me before: The journey might be hard, but it does get better!
We all deserve to shine, to love and to live. Be proud and celebrate yourselves.

Queer

I was a freshman in high school when I realized that I liked both guys and girls. Most people always say that they always knew. But I didn’t. I found out that you can like the same sex when I was in middle school. The thought of me liking girls never really crossed my mind until the eighth grade. I had never been attracted to any girl at that point, but a little voice inside my head told me to explore that idea. So, I did my research. I took tests online, looking up ‘how do you know if you like girls’, and watched endless youtube videos on the subject. It wasn’t easy but I finally came to terms with my sexuality (thanks to Rose and Rosie for the help!). After I accepted this is who I am I told my best friend first, then my parents, then the rest of my friends. I still struggle with being proud, which is why only my parents know and not the rest of my family. But I’m thankful for such supportive parents and friends as well as the amazing representation on Wynonna Earp. It really helps normalize my feelings and makes me feel like I’m not alone, that there’s not anything wrong with me and that it’s ok to love who I love.

Because after all, love wins.

Happily working on it…

My best friend at primary school was my first love. I remember a lot from that time although frustratingly not first meeting her. But I remember her vividly. Tall (obviously relatively) with long dark hair and a lick right in the centre of her forehead. Her name was Cassie and when one day she wasn’t well enough for us to hang out, it was the first time I recall my heart hurt. I sat on my swing and I cried.

But even at primary school at the same time I was clearly in love with Cassie I had a boyfriend with whom I shared my first kiss, and more boys and more kisses followed. I liked boys a lot – I still do, they are often the people with whom I feel most comfortable and share the most in common. But it’s easy to confuse these two feelings when you are 5! And once they are set you barely question them; society gives you no call or space to.

I didn’t know there was any other option to the fairytale ending of when boy meets girl, that was and mostly remains, ever present in our society. Until I watched Ellen coming out when I was 15. Channel 4 made it a big Friday night special – they celebrated. In 1997. At peak Friday night TV mania! I’ve never had an opportunity to say thank you to whoever made that happen (btw a generation of queers salute you) – but thanks to them I started to think about myself and who I was. And although I knew in my little world it would be hard – I had this possibility that in the big world I would join there were ways I could be me and maybe even celebrated.

I came out at university. I was 20 years old. I was practically the only gay in the village. It was 2003…

I have continued and evolved to at least try to be authentically me. What that means changes. The recent explosion (or at least it seems to me) of gender fluidity is another expansion of who you can be. And another moment for me to reflect. Who knows what that means for me yet because now I’m older there are more layers to peel back.

But the culmination of it all is where I am now. And I have a job I love, amazing supportive friends, a wonderful family – one I was born into, and one I made. The later of which includes my two beautiful little boys, who warm my world.

I’m an unconventional traditionalist. Or at least I am for now.

The dance of sexualities and how I realized I wasn’t as straight as I thought I was

I was born almost 18 years ago in Germany, a country that nowadays strongly supports members of the LGBTQ+ community. I never saw that, though; I never really realized that gay people even existed. Sure, I knew it, I have heard about it, but never once in my life have I seen a gay person in real life.
Which is why I was frightened when I first looked after a girl. I was frightened because of my friends. They were by no means homophobic, but they always dreamed about boys, always talked about how they wanted their first kiss to be, some of them even were in relationships.
And then there was me, the girl who already felt like she didn’t belong anywhere before and it drove me even more insane that I did not want these things- or rather: I wanted them to be with a girl.
Whenever I saw an attractive woman on TV, I felt this weird, tingly feeling in my stomach. For a second it felt like home, or at least it felt right.
Not a single person around me showed any sign of homophobia, but I was scared, scared to admit the truth and I tried to push it away as far as possible. After, I fell into a hole. A deep, bottomless hole. My grades dropped, I stopped taking proper care of myself, I fell and it didn’t seem to stop. All because of these thoughts that kept recurring in my mind.

Years passed by and in 2015, I decided to share my thoughts with a friend of mine. She was okay with it, but it wasn’t a big deal to her. Being the shy child I was, I immediately regretted telling her and I started to think that she didn’t care about me.
A year later I told a few more friends about my sexuality, back then I labeled myself as bisexual, and all of them were more than just okay with it. I slowly became comfortable with it as well and started to watch LGBTQ+ related TV-shows and movies, I started reading more books and manga that dealt with women loving other women and slowly but steadily, I became comfortable in my skin.
2017 was a year filled with love, acceptance, and recovery. I started taking care of myself again, I got even more involved in the LGBTQ+ community, joined group chats and at some point, I even started making jokes about my sexuality. I was comfortable, but there were still two people missing in that equation: my parents.

I told them three times that I am not (only) into boys. The first time was in 2017, we were at a birthday celebration and at some point, I decided to tell my father that I’m bi. He didn’t believe me.
Coming-Out number two took place in 2018 when I was studying abroad in the United States. He never responded to that specific text message.
Number three, 2019, I told him when we visited Egypt. At that time, I already figured out that I was gay, not bi as I thought I was. He once again said that it isn’t true, that I am confused.

But I will not let that define me.
Because years later, I am here and I am an openly gay woman. I am proud of myself and even if I haven’t escaped the bottomless hole entirely, I’m almost there.
I have a lot of friends that belong to the LGBTQ+ community, the others strongly support it. I make jokes about being gay, on special occasions (Pride for instance) I dress up as a rainbow. If anyone asks me where I want to be in twenty years, I have no problem to admit that I want to live in an apartment in my hometown, a dog, wife and maybe a child by my side. I know who I am now and I am proud.

I am about to graduate from High School and I will go to college to study film. I want to write and produce TV-shows in the future because to me, they are not just entertainment, they are therapy. Shows/series like ‘The 100’, ‘Orange is The New Black’, ‘Wynonna Earp’ and ‘Carmilla’ have helped me to find myself and even friends who support me no matter what I do.

I want to change something in the future and I want to help people feel things they thought they could never feel before.
I want to #startthewave and give a voice to all the colours of the rainbow!

Much much love, respect, appreciation and gratitude from Germany!