Community Rainbow Waves

Samantha – Homoromantic Demisexual – She/Her/Hers

My story takes place in Texas, commonly known as one of the least open-minded states in the United States. My story is a long one, as my identity evolved drastically through time. I am blessed, however, to have grown up in a very loving and accepting family. I’ve known members of the LGBTQ2IA+ community my whole life, yet I never really considered it for myself until I was around 16. As a kid everyone would ask what we wanted to be when we grew up and I would stay silent because there’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted to be. Happy. At 16 I had no idea who I was and how could I be happy when I didn’t even know what or who I wanted in life. I honestly didn’t have much to go off of, I’d never had so much as a crush on anyone, regardless of gender. I credit much of my realization to the love I have for television. At 16 I would watch pairings like Clarke and Lexa from the 100 and it helped me to accept the fact that maybe I was gay. I say that like I was just like “Yep, I’m gay” but honestly I just felt like I needed to put a label on myself and although “gay” didn’t really feel like it fit who I was completely, I didn’t really know what else I could be. I could imagine myself in a relationship with a woman in a way that, to this day, I cannot imagine with a man. And honestly, the thought terrified me. Society can be cruel, as can my mind. I began to ask myself if the “unconditional” love my parents had for me was truly that, or if I would lose everything and everyone I love in one fell swoop by coming out. I mentally weighed the options countless times and basically began to prepare for the worst. Family and friends have always been the most important thing in my life and therefore, I decided that I if I could save my relationships by waiting for the “perfect moment” then that’s what I would do. Fear cost me a year of my life and I quickly learned that the perfect moment does not exist. So I decided to do what I do best, and write it down. See I’ve tried the in person coming out thing and call me a coward, but I am not built for the extra level of stress and anxiety it gave me. So a week after my 17th birthday, I came out to my parents as gay via college application. I don’t think I’ll ever forget holding my breath as they read over my shoulder, nor will I forget the silence that seemed to last forever before my mother sat next to me, turned towards me, and asked…”so you really never want to see men naked????” I laughed and the anxiety began to fade, even if the label wasn’t a perfect fit. I knew it was just the first step to coming out, but I had at least gotten through it alive. Though the inaccuracy of the label I had given myself still bothered me. That’s when I turned to research. So. Much. Research. Why didn’t I experience crushes the same way that other people did? Why did I not care at all about sex in a society that was seemingly obsessed with it? That same week I came across AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, and began to read. I cried. They were describing me. Until that moment I had never heard of asexuality, it was so far off my radar and I quickly learned just how far off everyone else’s radar it was too. Cut to 18 year old me entering college for the first time. At this point I had come out to my immediate family. Again. And a select few of my friends. I had also been told by various people that people like me “shouldn’t exist” or that it was just a phase I would grow out of. I learned how common it was for asexual people to feel broken or even inhuman. People often assume that due to our sexuality, we don’t have emotions or the capacity to love or be loved. A cruel assumption but one that still occasionally plagues my feeling of self-worth. Despite these social pressures however, I entered college wanting nothing more than to be out and proud in this new place with all these new people. For the most part I was, though I knew that for every acquaintance I told, there was a family member that should’ve heard it from me first. So once again, I wrote it down. At 19, I came out on instagram and the same week I mailed 7 coming out letters and just like that, I was out to the world. The most stressful week of my life freed me. I was able to finally live my life as the emotional burden began to lift. Never have I been prouder of myself than in that moment. The 3 year journey led me to finally feeling seen and comfortable with who I am. Flashing forward to my life now as a 20 year old, my journey continues towards self-love. And although the state of the world worries me, I can honestly say that sitting down with my parents during this quarantine and watching Wynonna Earp, I really feel, for the first time in a very long time, happy. #OutIsTheNewIn

Work in progress

Firstly I would like to say to Dom, I am so glad you have found your truth and I wish you all the happiness in the world.

I believe I have also found my truth but I’m not sure if it will ever be uncovered but i’m working on it!

I grew up in the 80s & with parents who didn’t talk about “that sort of thing”

When i was at high school which was an all girls school, I played a lot of sport (& still do) & I was always trying to impress the girls (& still am lol) but I always came back to thinking it was wrong and that it was expected to find a nice boy and get married etc. But that never happened!

I’ve always been very body conscious & so I wasn’t very confident in speaking to men and I wasn’t one for going out much either.

A couple of years ago I came across “Wynnona Earp” & I loved it from the very 1st episode but especially Waverley and Nicole. I’m a little bit obsessed with their relationship & i often think that I would love to have a relationship like that. Think turning 50 also made me realise it was time to think of myself and what I really wanted.

However, I still haven’t told anyone & if i am honest I am scared to. There have been a couple of times that I’ve thought about discussing it with a friend who is gay & also a couple of my best friends but i always chicken out. I am thinking that i will when/if i meet that special someone but until then just keep quiet.

This is the 1st time I’ve really opened up about my feelings & it feels good & I have Dom, Kat, “Wynona Earp” & the fandom to thank for that.

Attending my first ever con last year and being amongst such an amazing community made me realise that this is the right path for me.

Closets Are For Clothes

When I first started to recognize my sexuality, I was thirteen years old. I was at the movies and when the lead actress appeared, there was a rush of desire. For the first time, I understood what all the fuss was about – but I knew I had to keep it a secret. I’d grown up in a small town and I’d never met an openly gay woman, but I knew what people thought of them.

That actress was the first in a long line of crushes. I spent so much time daydreaming about those women, and it felt good and right, but I stopped short of imagining myself with a girl.

I couldn’t be a lesbian. None of the lesbians I’d seen in the media looked, dressed, or acted anything like me. This was during the 90s, and I’d internalized a boat load of homophobia. The articles I sought out in teen magazines reassured me. According to them, a lot of girls had crushes on other girls, but it was a phase they grew out of.

Throughout all of this, I was dating guys. I said yes to anyone who asked me but as soon as I had a boyfriend, I’d do everything I could to distance myself. Being with boys gave me a strange, awful, empty feeling.

Later, there was a lot of guilt to untangle about the way I’d treated these guys. Plus, I had a lot of work to do to unlearn the internalized homophobia that had made me so sure I wasn’t gay in the first place.

I went from lying to myself about it, to accepting that it wasn’t going to change. During that time, I promised myself that nobody would ever find out. Then, slowly, I realized that I couldn’t live a full life without being open. I get that it’s not that way for everyone, but I sensed that it would be like that for me.

I inched out of the closet. First, I told my siblings, then my best friends, one parent and then another, gradually other friends and family. My worst fears never came true, but it wasn’t all positive either. There were reactions that hurt like hell.

That was nearly fifteen years ago, and I’m still coming out. It’s true when people say that it never stops, but it’s not hard anymore.

There was a time when I would have done anything to make it go away. If there was a magic pill that could have made me straight, I probably would have taken it.

The fact that the world makes young people feel that way is tragic. Boil it down to its simplest parts, and people who have a problem with LGBTQ+ people just can’t handle difference. They want everyone to be like them, so they can feel that their way of being is the only correct one. That speaks to a deep insecurity and unhappiness.

I love my life. Being gay is a part of me that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’ve got a long-term girlfriend, great friends, a job I like. I still get crushes on celebrities, and it would never occur to me to hide it anymore. Hard-won pride is pretty sweet!

The woman in Compartment C, Car 193

I didn’t come to terms with my sexuality until I tried to be everything else but myself first. Even today, I shy away from receiving love. I remember feeling myself let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding at Electric Forest on June 26th, 2015. I remember the day before not being as colorful. It was in Nashville years prior that I took my first big step to come out. It was midnight and sleep was impossible those days. I slipped out through the back door of the second story entrance down a long staircase past the window of my sleeping roommates, and I would get into the car and drive down the rocks of Battlefield Drive. I drove alone on the streets of Nashville past Sevier park, past Belmont University, and I would hear the clash of live bands outside of the bars off Broadway. This was the only way I could quiet my anxieties. Sometimes, Abigail and William would pick me up in their wagon and take me to East Nashville. We would walk into their bare house and go to the back yard and start the fire pit. William would turn on Delta Spirit, and they would let me talk about whatever it was that was keeping me up at night. It was always the same thing, but I wasn’t brave enough to talk about it. So I talked around it, and they let me. They gave me the space I needed to talk circles around my sexuality until I felt safe enough to talk about it directly. After I did, I was able to come out to my friends one by one. I flew to NYC to have dinner with a friend and to tell her I loved her when we were in high school. At JFK, I called my mom and started crying as I told her what I confessed to my friend. I asked her if that was okay and if she stilled loved me (which she said of course). Coming out wasn’t hard just the first time. It was hard every time, and even after coming out and moving to Los Angeles, I still found myself hiding behind terms that didn’t fit me, like bisexuality. I spent the first couple years in Los Angeles testing the waters, but still feeling like I wasn’t confident enough to be myself. Even today, I have to remind myself to let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. And this isn’t always the same breath. We are constantly restricting ourselves in different ways, oftentimes unnoticed. The times that I am the happiest are the times I didn’t even realize I was letting go. I was just being me at that moment, not for anyone else, and not for any other purpose but to be.

Lesbian

I have known I was gay my entire life. I grew up with an accepting mom, but the rest of my family was not as accepting. I didn’t tell a soul until I was in middle school. I told one of my closest friends, and she was very accepting. This was helpful for me but unfortunately she left the school a few months after I told her. I felt more alone than ever. My mental health was horrible. My anxiety was out of control and I become quite depressed. I was ecxited for highschool as I thought it was going to be an opportunity to finally be myself. Unfortunately that ended up not being the case. I become friends with people who were not accepting of the LGBTQ community. This largely affected me as I started thinking I was wrong for liking girls. I tried really hard to like boys. I coundnt think about anything else, I started self harming. It was the lowest point in my life. I then met a girl who changed my life. She was in the same grade, and we become close friends. We spent all our time together. I realized I had feelings for her but was ashamed. One day she told me she had feelings for me. I was so happy that she felt the dame way. We started dating, and finally told my mom everything. I hit help for my mental health and made a decision to be myself no matter what. I git friends who accept me for me. I am now the happiest I have been in my life. I realized that I am me, and that j can change who I am. I also want to add in here that Dom has helped me greatly. I have looked up to you ever since I saw the first episode of wynnona earp. You are a truly beautiful person who is saving peoples lives. I hope my story can help someone as I wish I would have had someone to help me.

H. E4L and forever grateful for the Earpers WayHaught

I kind of had an inkling I wasn’t straight back in late 2015. I was really into The 100 and I remember I was unreasonably attached to Lexa and Clarke. It was the first canon LGBT relationship I’d ever seen on TV and for some reason, that meant a lot to me. Then I started watching Wynonna Earp in 2016, because I’d heard about WayHaught and I got really excited that another show might have a canon couple (of course, I got totally hooked on WE within an episode.) And the whole time I’m watching Clexa and WayHaught especially I remember thinking “I wish I had that.” I started seriously thinking about my future and realised that, when I didn’t actively think “I want a husband and kids and etc” if I closed my eyes and tried to picture getting married…it wasn’t always a man. Sometimes, it was a woman I could imagine marrying. And right as I was having that realisation and trying to reconcile it with my religion (Christianity) the whole Lexa thing happened and I got angry. That was one of 2 representations I had to try and figure this out and they just get rid of her?! I decided that I wasn’t going to think about it anymore. I’d kind of figured out I was definitely bi at that point but because of the whole religion thing I decided “hey, at least there’s still a big chance I’ll end up with a guy.”

My nephew was born in the June of 2016 with a serious heart condition and for a decent few weeks, I thought it was God’s punishment. I’d figured out I was bi and God didn’t like that so he punished my family. I was 15 and I didn’t really process things right so I legit thought for weeks that it was my fault. And then I started going online more and I found the Earpers and that whole community made me feel a lot more comfortable. I found people of my faith that weren’t straight and talked to them about everything. And the whole time, I still had WayHaught on Wynonna Earp showing me that girl/girl relationships were alright. Right after the season 1 finale of WE, I told my sister that I thought I was bi. My mum figured it out within a year and told my dad for me. I didn’t officially come out to any of my friends or anyone from my high school until the end of 2019, after I started uni, but most of my close friends kind of figured it out because I stopped fighting it and actively started talking about LGBT stuff.

I was out and proud from my first day at university and that felt so amazing. It was the first time I hadn’t hid my sexuality at all from anyone and that was one of the best experiences of my life. Turned out a decent number of people I started hanging out with, both in lectures and society meetings, were also LGBT+ so for the first time in my life, I had a significant amount of non-hetero friends, one of whom is as big of an Earper as me. I found my people, both on and offline.

McKinlee- a continuous queer journey of growth

I wrote everything below one evening after discovering Start the Wave. Before now only my notes pages has been witness to my reflections. I am nervous publishing this here- because my thoughts may be an echo chamber and I’ll connect with no-one or because I may actually connect with someone and this is a vulnerable introduction.

My coming out journey started just over a decade ago at 16 and it continues today as I un-learn and re-learn about myself and the world around me.

I have gathered that this is a life long journey of discovering how I wish to live as well as how I wish to uplift all of the other beautiful lives that do not have it as easy as I- a cis white lesbian.

How I display myself in this world has been an up and down journey. Predictably, my lows have come from society and my own preconceived notion of what is “right.” But my highs, they have come from the representation, those who have been fighting long before I, the ones who dare to live authentically and the mountains- who always seem to bring me the most peace within.

Prior to my self discovery I had been called gay slurs for the way I stared too long at girls and the excitement I got from being around my older female teammates. But then I had my first kiss with a girl and I panicked. I realized I liked the secrecy of it. The idea that you have something with someone that no one else knows about. It felt exciting in high school when I very much felt like I was on the outside looking in. I didn’t have the core group of friends I desired but I had the secret of kissing a girl behind the lockers. When I trusted a friend with this secret my worst fears came to fruition. In 2010 I was outed on Facebook when she revealed “my inappropriate behaviors” in a status. The feeling of isolation grew and the bullying increased so I turned to boys.

I began working in downtown Orlando and found my chosen family of queer humans who opened the doors of queer nightclubs to me. I felt accepted, understood, at ease and at home. During this time I also had a thoughtful and beautiful boyfriend who went along on my journey of self discovery and understood when it led to the type of person he was not. At 18 I came out to my parents. I got mixed reactions but in my spiteful teenage years I didn’t care. As I have grown so have they and I feel extremely accepted- even if it did take awhile. I’d dare to say they are even proud now.

I was finally #OUT or as out as you can be when the people close to you know but you keep your relationships hidden, pretend to be straight in a crowd and only tell friends after you suss out if they would be accepting. I had many beautiful dating experiences that never made it to the public eye. I realized that it wasn’t the secrecy I craved, I was just deeply ashamed of who I was. I truly believed that “I just hadn’t met the right guy yet.”

But then Pulse happened. Pulse, a nightclub in downtown Orlando that I found my queerness in. A club that I felt accepted and loved and understood in was attacked and so much of my community was lost. I was living in New Zealand at the time and had 7 roommates who didn’t know I was gay. How could I be ashamed of who I am when my own community dared to be themselves and was murdered for it? How could I watch my community mourn and stay quiet? That moment changed my life. I came out to anyone and everyone who would listen. I bought a pride flag and waved it at the top of mountains I climbed. I screamed it from the rooftops. I became loud, active and involved in my community and most importantly I became proud.

I rode that wave for years as I found friends, lovers, communities and representation. I felt sorrow for those who dare to emit hate into the world. I was out and proud because those who are struggling to get there deserve to see that it gets better. I decided in my late 20’s to go back to school to become a nurse. I moved to a small town knowing that being out would be less than ideal and I could pass as straight. But, I never wanted to go back into the closet or to feel inferior. So I met my new roommates, classmates, workout buddies and community and I came out. And that was the most trivial, anguished, challenging year of my adult life. I experienced the homophobia I had only ever read in newspapers. I began looking over my shoulder and set an alarm for every hour being afraid to stay asleep. My ears rang with gay slurs. I was still proud to be gay but I was not happy. I found solace in the representation I saw in the media- grasping at any and all of it I could find.

And then quarantine happened. At the midst of my depression I moved to my moms and I left that town for good- graduating with a job lined up in a progressive city. But now I had a lot of serious work to do on myself mentally. It was as though the years that I spent exhilarated about my queerness had dissipated. I couldn’t (and sometimes still can’t) look at myself in the mirror.

And then in the recommended section of instagram I saw a post by none other than Dominique. I unfortunately was not familiar with her or her work but I read an incredibly beautiful post about her coming out. Those words took me on a journey that can be described nothing short of otherworldly. That post led me into the incredibly represented world of Wynonna Earp that I can’t even begin to write about because it would supersede this whole post with one far longer and emotionally charged.

Dom’s post made me feel many things again. Proud. Seen. Worthy. Accepted. And Beautifully Queer. The conversation that could come out of me from that one post would take hours to unpack.

The post and this movement has really opened up so many incredibly beautiful conversations to be had about what it means to be queer and how we see ourselves within this identity at different stages of our growth.

I am in a period of regrowing. But I will always be proud. Thank you for this space. Although I can’t individually connect with those on here, I feel universally linked.

Woman, lesbian, polyamorous

When I was 14, I met a new girl in town. She was lesbian and has came out a long time ago, she was 18. We see each other during one year, I taught it was friendship first until the holidays (June-August) where I miss her so much. So we see each other again, run and kissed in a public place. I didn’t came out to my parents at this moment, but two years later. My parents just says “OK” when I say it. But they don’t know that I’m polyamorous (saying that is much difficult that saying that I like girls.)

QUEER

I started thinking I was into girls when I entered 6th grade and this girl just made me feel different. I questioned my sexuality for while not really knowing if I just wanted to be her friend or if I liked her. And then after I finally knew I definitely like women I started wondering if I even liked boys plus now I knew there was also non-binary people and was so confused !
But I just wanted people to know I wasn’t straight so I came out to one of my friends when I was 14 and slowly people on my grade ever assumed I liked girls or heard it from someone. No one made fun of me or bullied me and I’m so grateful for all the lgbtqia people who made it possible for that to happen.

And last year I came out to my parents on my 16th birthday and they kind off already know my dad’s response was actually « we know you like girls » sooooo guess I wasn’t really subtle but I like to see it as my parents quietly watching grow and understand myself.

So yeah I’m pretty lucky and to be truthful the only real problems I’ve had are with my own insecurities. I just don’t really talk that much about my sexuality because it feels like I’m taking to much place so I have to sit through my straight brother explaining homophobia to me (and my family, he definitely an ally I just don’t always feel like I’ve experienced enough to actually debate about it with him )

I am so happy that there are safe spaces like this for the community and I just want to say that if the people around aren’t accepting of your sexuality they’re the problem and you are beautiful and strong and loved

Pat F. (she/her)

Little Pat already knew that she liked boys and girls. Surrounded by friends and always dreaming of colorful friendships. But only the boys had the courage. The girls only saw their friend. I kissed many boys, but I knew that one day I would kiss girls.

I let time take care of that part. And when a girl finally wanted to kiss me I just closed my eyes and let it happen. It was wonderful.

The time passed and the falmiliar meetings speculating the life of others about boyfriends, children, marriage … And I let them talk about how many boyfriends I had. I have never spoken openly to the “family” that I am queer (I like different types of people). My 2 sisters, 1 niece and my closest friends know that I am queer because I don’t hide.

But this year I decided to put the rainbow flag in the description on the social networks that I am on. Family members and acquaintances will see what they never really wanted to know.

And Dominique Provost-Chalkley, you are a beautiful person!
I was unable to read your statement and remain silent.
Thanks to your delicacy I wanted to write …

I am OUT. (and also a ACE “demisexual” brazilian person)

#OutIsTheNewIn