Community Rainbow Waves

Becoming Gabe

As someone who spends their time writing and creating stories, I struggle with mine. I’m still figuring this all out, still taking things day by day, but for as long as I can remember, there’s been a part of me that didn’t quite fit with the rest of me. It was like a puzzle piece that was somewhat shoved into a space, even though the edges were too sharp, and the middle was distorted. When I was thirteen, I realized I liked girls and boys. It was terrifying, as I wasn’t exactly raised in the type of household where things like that were easily accepted. So, I came out to my friends at school, but lived a lie outside of it. I had secret girlfriends, secret social media accounts, and I refused to come out to anyone remotely considered family because I was afraid that they would abandon me. (I have abandonment issues, but that’s for a different time and place.) After I “came out” as bisexual, it took about five years for me to drop the ‘bi’ part and accept that I liked women. This was before I understood that bisexuality didn’t have to be fifty-fifty. Regardless, up until the age of twenty-three, I was a regular lesbian. I was what some might consider a ‘stud.’
Now, here’s the hard part. I’ve recently moved away from home, living away from my parents and from old friends, and I’m in an environment where I have no choice but to be honest with myself. This new city and new home literally forced me to be myself, and what I discovered has altered every aspect about my life. So, remember I said I was a lesbian until the age of twenty-three? Well, I turned twenty-three last September, and around that time, I had a massive reality check smack me in the face. I was living a lie. I came out to one person, and it was a complete accident. Sort of. She somewhat pushed me out of the box I was hiding in, and I started the very long road to acknowledging, accepting, and respecting the idea that it wasn’t the sexuality that was wrong. It was the identity. And by that, I mean…
It wasn’t whether I liked girls or boys or everyone in between.
It was the fact I was doing so as a woman.
With that said, to whoever reads this or comes across it, I’m Trans. I identify as a man.
Crazy, right? Saying it, even on a computer, still gives me horrible anxiety because I haven’t crossed that bridge to full acceptance. I’ve only taken small steps, but they’re more freeing than any lie I’ve told myself over the past several years.
There are people who still don’t know, and there are people who know that don’t know how to treat me anymore. Then there are the wonderful people in my life who took it in stride and treat me the exact same. It’s freeing, terrifying, and nauseating all at once. But I wouldn’t change this. Not now. Not after finally finding myself.
I, Gabriel, am a man who likes people, who loves love, and who hopes that this journey will continue to bring me happiness and peace of mind.

Bisexual

I knew I was different when I was about 11. Didn’t realize it until I was in my twenties.
I was reading fan-fiction one day and started talking to the author of the story and she told me that she was gay and how she came out and was proud of it. I told her what I had been feeling and came out to her as bisexual.
Then I had to buck the courage to tell My best friend of 20 years at that point. But she had pointed it out to me one day after my conversation with the author friend.
She told me she always knew because I looked at girls differently than I do guys. She wasn’t put off because she has a gay family member.
I told my husband and he smiled and said I still love you.
The hardest one to tell was my other friend. She wasn’t too keen on gay people as In she just didn’t get it. However now we play “couple” together when we do go out to the bar for a girls night. She’s fine with me now. Just blindsided her.
In a manner of speaking I haven’t totally come out. I’m terrified of telling my family. My dad I’m sure knows I’ve hinted at it and he goes with it. But it’s my mother. She’s called bisexual people greedy. And it’s stuck with me. She’s called me a butch since I cut my hair differently. Or how I wear my clothes. She says you dress like a dyke. I get annoyed and ignore her as best as I can.
It hurts. It will always hurt. But Dominique you inspire me. So here is my truth. I am a bisexual married woman. I love the heart not the parts type.

Not coming out on my own terms

I knew that I was different from the age of six. I grew up in a neighborhood that primarily had boys my age and I got to grow up with them and plays sports, get dirty and pretend to be Power Rangers (my best friend and I always fought over being the red ranger) and I absolutely loved playing with these guys. I never had a silly childhood crush. That is until a girl our age moved in across the street. I didn’t really have any female friends when I was younger but the ones I had were nice. There was something different about this girl though and I didn’t process what it was until I got older. But at the time my best friend had a huge crush on her and it made me really mad. To the point where I would start dressing like him and doing things the other boys did to flirt with a girl. Until my best friend called me out on it and said it wouldn’t work because I’m a girl and girls can’t like other girls. In my mind at the time, he was right.

I never had crushes in elementary school. I was never interested. By middle school, everybody I hung out with had a boyfriend or was into a boy. There wasn’t a single boy that I had a crush on then. It led me to making up a fake boyfriend who goes to a different school with photos of some kid I found on myspace (not my finest moment lol) It worked for a while and afterwards my friends kept telling me that there were some boys who had crushes on me so I decided to give it a shot and “date them.” It wouldn’t last longer than a week with any of them. They would try to hold my hand and kiss me and I was so not into it. I was extremely uncomfortable and would just end it.

Ahh, high school. I went to a school where I didn’t know anybody. It was a fresh start. I made brand new friends, most of which were female, and was lucky enough to find two girls that would become my best friends. One of the friends I made however was a guy and because I was in high school now and hadn’t really had a boyfriend and him being attractive, I went for it. I really liked talking to him and hanging out with him, but any physical interaction was so off-putting to me. And during this relationship I had brought to the forefront the thing that I had been suppressing the most. I didn’t like boys in that way. I liked girls. It was extremely confusing and I slipped into a really dark place that led me into doing some things that I am not proud of. But my friends being as supportive as they are actually helped me figure things out in my head which made me finally comfortable enough to try things out with girls and see how it went. I remember kissing a girl first the first time and it felt like somebody smacked me hard enough to have whiplash. I knew for certain that I was gay. Out of this came many flings and eventually a girlfriend. Only my closest friends knew and I eventually told my younger brother since he would be at my school as a freshman my senior year.

I was making plans on coming out to my parents. I really terrified, mostly to come out to my dad and stepmom because of their upbringing and religious views. I decided I was going to tell my mom first. That is until my dad read my personal notes between my gf and I. He told me I was no longer to have her over and that I couldn’t see her unless it was for something school related. He practically grounded me to the house for a while. I would sneak over to her house to hang out but my dad tracked my phone every time I went out and he called me screaming at me. I got so sick of it and drive to my moms house only to find him there already to talk about it. My mom had my back and my dad was pissed especially since she still let my gf come over to her house. I was so devastated, but mostly because I couldn’t come out when and the way I wanted to. Everything felt like a mess. As soon as I turned 18 that year I moved into my mom’s house permanently because I had to get away from my dad. I didn’t talk to him much for a while. I’m not sure what happened during that time away but he had a complete change of heart and is now totally accepting of it. I got very lucky in that regard.

Ever since my experience, I work very hard with other people who are faced with the challenges of coming out and reach out to be a supportive helping hand. It also amazes me at how much more positive representation we are getting from LGBTQIA+ media and art. I wish I could have had this kind of representation when I was growing up. The incredible work that people put into the LGBTQIA+ community, such as Dominique’s Start the Wave project, are paving the way to a more positive perspective both outside and inside the community itself. My parents, especially my mom, are now huge advocates and take the time to watch and read and research what the community and the representation is all about. I hope that one day everybody can come to this type of understanding, whether it is something they accept or not. Just the understanding itself can be the spark to getting another step closer to love and acceptance.

Queer!

i first realized that i wasn’t quite straight when i was 12. it was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me, and i tried to suppress my feelings for a couple years before i realized that i couldn’t live my life like that.
a couple months before i turned 17, i decided to stop pretending and stop hiding. it was both the most daunting and most relieving thing i’d ever done. i was extremely lucky to have friends that graciously welcomed me into their arms, and i am so incredibly thankful for them.
people that i grew up with were forced to see that lgbtq+ do exist, and that their existence is normal. my coming out may have been uncomfortable and scary at the time, but now, i’m so proud of myself for being open and true to myself, as well as opening the eyes of people that had previously held negative ideas about the lgbtq+ community.
i’m here, i’m queer, and i fucking love people.

“I am enough”, Monica

I think I always knew but I denied the ever obvious signs or evidence or feelings that I had towards the same sex. By the time I did come out I had fooled the world all the while punishing and with-holding truth from myself. I came from a Republic and Catholic family and also when to Catholic School my entire life. Being told that what I was feeling was a sin and that I would most likely go to hell I quickly realized that I was worth nothing just because of those facts. As I grew I started to open my eyes to the outside world. To see the things I was always “forbidden” to see. To see beauty in something rather than the sin. I live in Seattle and when I was 21 I moved to So. Cal for a few years and it was then that I had my first kiss with a woman. It was like the darkness in me disappeared and the light that I always pushed down took its place. After a few years of So. Cal, I moved back home and had to face the truth and tell my family. I was 24 years old when I told my family and the hurt that was said, the worries, the pains, the agony, and torture came bubbling back up only to have be reinforced with a family member telling me “I wish you would’ve been a miscarriage.” Those words burned into absorbed my heart and mind for months.
I remember walking down the street one day and it hit me like a ton of bricks and for the first time in my life I asked myself “how can something like loving someone be wrong?” I then drove to my parents house and said “if you can’t accept me then you aren’t deserving enough to be apart of my life because I am a good person who desires the world to be its true authentic self in love.” Walked out didn’t speak to my family for a while after that.

I am lucky enough that my family did come around. I married my incredible wife when it first became legal in Washington State on December 8, 2012 and have never looked back. My family loves my wife as they do our two beautiful, strong, and determined daughters. I am so grateful for the road that has taken me to where I am though incredible painful, I am not sure I would be me if I hadn’t.

I so believe in this community because it is based on love. Something that should be seen, heard, and felt. I am so grateful and proud that I get to live my truth everyday. That I get to be the best of me because I now know that “I am enough.”

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.

17, Bisexual girl i think?

I’ve been reading a lot of the waves that have been posted and my story is nothing compared to that, I don’t really have friends that I’ve had a crush or something. I mostly started figuring it all out through tv, I really started thinking about how much female crushes I have I cannot even think about them all and men are a few that I really find attractive.
It was 2016 when I started questioning myself deeply, I had found out my brother was gay and he was married and I didn’t even know because my dad didn’t want me to know because I guess he thought I would “turn out” gay too, which guess what dad? I am (i’m still not openly out, just 3 friends know and they have been the best about it) anyways going back to the story, I started asking myself if it was just because the actresses were just too beautiful and I wanted to be them or what, so yeah, I pushed it down saying I couldn’t like women because my parents would hate me or stuff like that (internalized homophobia is a thing and I hate it) then I would really started bringing out how hot and beautiful these girls were to a friend and obsessing over a relationship that wasn’t even real to her and she asked me and i was like yeah maybe i really don’t know and she was just really happy that I was even able to “confirm.” She really was the best and I think that if it wouldn’t have been for her I would be still pressing myself over being straight and just that. She was the OG knowing since 2017 I think I don’t really remember the exact year but anyways fast forward to this year. During quarantine I have been spending a lot of time with myself, thinking about a lot of stuff, really learning about the community and I have been having like fantasies about how would be my life if I was with a girl and I really see myself more than with a guy, not saying it wouldn’t happen but I just know I would not just be boys. The thing is that a part of my doesn’t “want” to be gay because my whole family is Catholic, like reaally into the religion, I don’t care about the “god doesn’t love you if you are gay” because I know he does, he has and always will if i keep myself close to him because he lives in my (just my opinion) but I just feel like my family wont accept the union of LGBTQ+ and God since they all are extremist (and when I say that, i’m not exaggerating) My dad has been homophobic to my brother and doesn’t really interact with my brother in law and since I am the only girl, that still can have children, (I have 2 siblings, both male, neither of them want kids and I do so) I feel like he would only focus in the women part and not think about the fact that he would still get grandchildren even if im gay or not. My mom its more “accepting” she does interact sometime with my brother in law but she is more religious than my father so I don’t know how she would take it. From my mom’s side I only have family that is extremists catholics or trump supporters which are a no no too. From my dad’s side I would have it easier but I still don’t know how they would take it.
Going back to the beginning of quarantine, I had a friend who was throwing hints or something through her facebook posts so I reached out to her and started also giving kind of hints even though at that time I still was pushing my bisexuality down, I was able to accept and say I was bi or thought and she started telling me about how she had accepted herself and stuff and that really helped me to really beginning accepting myself. Now 4 months later, all I just can say is thank you to literally all actresses out there, representing the LGBTQ+ community for helping me find myself as they also might be finding themselves or found through playing those characters although im still closeted, I feel like I have came out of my own shell.

Still figuring this out

I’ve never admitted it before, ever, to anyone… I’ve spent 15 years feeling like there is something wrong with me! I am brand new to this world and to earpers and I’m blown away by the community feel. I was introduced just a few weeks ago after reading Dom’s birthday post and after reading it I related so much. I was so inspired by her words. I related to the feelings of suppression and putting the part of me I knew to be true to the back of my mind to pretend it didn’t exist. The part of me that I know is also attracted to woman. I’ve got that feeling where my tummy is doing flips by even just typing it. Because I’ve never faced it until now.
I’ve been in heterosexual relationships my whole life and have been in my current relationship for the last 10 years. I have young children who are my everything. This is part of the question that runs through my mind, how can I be in a long term relationship with a man, be a mum and still know that I do have an attraction to woman too? Does it make me a bad person? Or a bad mum? My partner would also likely feel betrayed that I never talked about this. I don’t even know how he would feel about it. There are so many scenarios in my head.
I’m still not ready to verbalise what I am but at least I have finally admitted it to myself. Maybe over time, meeting the right people and continuing to be inspired within the STW community I will one day be at my bravest. But for now, all I know is that Dom sparked something within me to be true to myself. I’m a thirty year old bisexual.

The darkness and pain never ends

Am a bisexual who haven’t come out to my family, but told my close friends
I know my family will never approve and I don’t want to lose them. They the only thing I’ve got.

Lesbian

I’m closed Lesbian. I’m living in the country is strictly Illegal for LGBTQ. But I’m happy with who I am.